Spice cake with cream cheese frosting

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This spice cake with cream cheese frosting is made from a classic vanilla cake made with brown sugar and warm spices and layered with white chocolate cream cheese frosting. The white chocolate in the cream cheese frosting allows you to make a thick cream cheese frosting without any icing sugar or powdered sugar, but the frosting is still thick enough to pipe on cakes.

spice-cake with cream cheese frosting and cookie crumbs

Getting creative with a basic vanilla cake recipe

Every birthday should be celebrated with a cake, if possible. And while you can't go wrong with the classic vanilla cake with milk chocolate frosting, sometimes it's nice to switch it up. You can take your favourite vanilla cake and get creative with it through some thoughtful baking substitutions and also some careful additions. Here are a few ways to jazz up your favourite vanilla cake recipe:

use brown sugar instead of granulated sugar, which will give the cake a light butterscotch or caramel flavour: to do so, replace a portion (or even all) of the granulated sugar with light brown sugar or even dark brown sugar (gram for gram, or cup for cup)
add almond extract, which will give the cake layer a marzipan flavour, while keeping the vanilla extract in the recipe: remember almond extract is potent so a little goes a long way and for a recipe with around 190 grams (1.5 cups) of flour, try adding 5 mL (1 teaspoon) and see how you like it
add citrus zest, which will give your cake layers a lovely flavour without you having to make any changes to the recipe: add the zest of a lemon or the zest of an orange to your favourite recipe, and you'll be surprised at the amount of flavour it imparts (starting with lemon sugar or orange sugar is the best way to add citrus flavour)
add warm spices to the dry ingredients, like in the recipe below, with a combination of cinnamon, ginger, and allspice. You can also try adding other spices, like ground cardamom like in this cardamom cranberry layer cake and you won't need to make any adjustments to the other ingredients to do so.
add ground tea leaves to the dry ingredients, like Earl Grey tea in this Earl Grey cake and you won't need to make any adjustments to the other ingredients to accommodate the tea.

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Baking a three-layer cake

I baked this 3-layer cake in one single, very tall cake pan (the only 6-inch pan that I owned at the time), and it took a full hour to bake, and in my opinion, could have even used a few minutes extra in the oven. Though you can easily bake a layer cake in one single layer that you will split after it cools, the baking time is so much longer and there is a greater risk that you end up slightly underbaking the cake, which may result in some gumminess at the bottom or even cake collapse. For this reason, I highly recommend that you bake this cake in three separate 6-inch cake pans (not one!) and if you only have one, then I suggest you bake the batter in stages, one-third at a time. The baking will be more even, and it will be much easier for you to judge doneness.

Take the time to prepare the cake pans before baking, by buttering the pans, lining the bottom with parchment, and dusting the sides with flour. This way your cakes will slide right out of the pan, without any resistance. And also take the time to use a few techniques to check if your cake is done baking so you don't have any surprises when you level and stack the cakes later.

Making thick cream cheese with white chocolate instead of icing sugar

Since I am still on a quest for a cream cheese frosting that is thick while using less icing sugar, I tried out a new-to-me recipe from Rose Levy Barenbaum's Cake Bible (Amazon). What is interesting about this recipe is that it is sweetened with white chocolate, and not icing sugar, so there is little to no chance of the cream cheese liquifying on you. I must admit that this recipe is a little challenging for a couple of reasons:

If the white chocolate is too hot, or melted too quickly and therefore more liquid than cooled melted white chocolate should be, your frosting may be runny and require some chill time to get back that perfect texture.
If your white chocolate is melted and cooled to room temperature, but it hits the mixer paddle or the bowl sides, it may harden up, resulting in a lumpy frosting.

Helpful tip: add the melted white chocolate in stages, being sure to get it right onto the room-temperature cream cheese, and not down the sides of the cold metal mixer bowl because it will splatter/harden. If you lose some to the beater or if you end up with a couple of nuggets of white chocolate, it's okay, people: it's white chocolate! And so, if that happens, let's just call it white chocolate chip cream cheese frosting, okay?

If you are looking for a "regular" cream cheese frosting made with icing sugar and without white chocolate, you can try this formula for thick cream cheese frosting which I used to top these apple cupcakes. It's also the frosting I used on this chocolate cake with cream cheese frosting, so you can see it works great for layer cakes!

I'm always looking for creative ways to decorate a cake if you aren't a professional cake decorated. I decided to decorate this birthday cake with honey Teddy Grahams. Animal crackers would also work. And the top of the cake is decorated with a stencil of the birthday number made with number cutouts and a generous scattering of graham cracker crumbs. Easy! Another great way would be to decorate the top of the birthday cake with candy and fun treats.

sliced spice cake with cream cheese frosting

How to store this cake

Given this spice layer cake is made with cream cheese frosting, it's best to store it in the fridge. If you've cut into the cake, just cover the cut edges with pieces of parchment to prevent them from drying out. Place the cake in the fridge until the frosting is firm and cold, then cover the whole thing with aluminum foil. You can store this cake for up to a week, or freeze slices for later.

For a detailed explanation, read about how to store cake.

📖 Recipe

layered spice cake with cream cheese frosting