Learn how to make the best pumpkin loaf cake with this easy recipe. The pumpkin cake batter is mixed using a two-bowl method, like muffins, so you don't need any mixers or special equipment. It's made with pumpkin purée (canned or homemade) and a mixture of warm spices for a delightful fall-flavoured treat. Great for breakfast and snacks!
This spiced pumpkin loaf cake is an easy pumpkin bread recipe to make with canned pumpkin, flavoured with cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, and cloves, yielding a perfect moist pumpkin bread for fall baking. It's made with canola oil but you can use butter instead. Feel free to add dried cranberries to this recipe.
If you love to bake with pumpkin, order your copy of the e-book All About Pumpkin so you can celebrate this star ingredient so you can go beyond the classic loaf cake!
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Ingredients
- flour—I tested this recipe with bleached all-purpose flour
- leavening agents—you will need both chemical leavening agents, baking powder and baking soda for this recipe. Please read about baking soda versus baking powder if you aren't sure the difference!
- spices—pumpkin pie spice mix works great here or a combination of cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and cloves
- salt: preferably Diamond Crystal fine kosher salt, but if you are using regular table salt, halve the amount so the cake isn't too salty.
- oil—using canola oil enhances the vegetal flavour of the pumpkin
- sugar—you can use either granulated sugar or brown sugar. Brown sugar will give the pumpkin bread more flavour
- eggs, specifically large eggs
- pure vanilla extract, either homemade or store-bought
- pumpkin purée, either canned or strained homemade pumpkin purée to remove excess water. Read about homemade pumpkin purée if you are unsure about how to remove the water and why
Please see the recipe card for the exact ingredients and quantities.
Substitutions and Variations
With a simple recipe like this one, your options for making substitutions are limited. Here are a few ideas to keep in mind, depending on what you want to make:
- Flour - instead of regular bleached all-purpose flour, you can use whole wheat flour but make sure it's a whole wheat all-purpose flour (and not a whole grain flour for making bread!) —check out this whole wheat pumpkin bread for inspiration
- Butter - you can replace the canola oil (or another neutral-tasting vegetable oil) in the cake recipe with butter. Use the same volume
- Eggs— if you'd like to bake pumpkin bread without the eggs, follow this healthier pumpkin bread, which has no eggs and less sugar and oil too and is vegan!
- Spices - you can use a combination of cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and cloves or pumpkin spice mix. Apple pie spices would also work
- Cranberries, raisins, or crystallized ginger - if you'd like to incorporate dried fruit in this recipe, I recommend raisins, dried cranberries (stick to dried cranberries, otherwise with fresh or frozen cranberries, you will get some gumminess around the baked fruit, which I find unpleasant), or even chopped crystalized ginger would be great in this pumpkin cake recipe—check out this cranberry pumpkin loaf
- Chocolate chip—you can easily stir a cup (175 grams) of chocolate chips into the batter before transferring it to the pan to make chocolate chip pumpkin bread.
After years of testing and improving on that base recipe, the recipe you see here looks nothing like the original because it has more pumpkin, more flour, and different amounts of chemical leaveners. This is the best version of the pumpkin bread recipe yet.
How to Make Pumpkin Bread
Sometimes the easiest recipes are hard to get right. Loaf cakes fall into this category. Most of them are made with the easiest two-bowl mixing method, just like muffins, and yet it can be a real challenge to balance the wet and the dry ingredients properly for a loaf cake. While muffins are small and have a lot of edge to them, meaning a lot of contact with the hot baking pan, loaf cakes are thick, made with a lot of batter and baked in a deep pan. This can lead to problems achieving the perfect cake crumb that's not too dense, and not wet.
Step 1: Combine the wet ingredients in a large bowl (image 1) and whisk them until smooth. In a separate bowl, whisk the dry ingredients together (image 2). I like to use a Danish dough whisk.
Step 2: Pour the dry ingredients over the wet (image 3) and stir them together (image 4). Don't overmix the batter and mix just until the dry ingredients disappear.
Step 3: Transfer the pumpkin cake batter to a buttered and floured loaf pan lined with parchment on the bottom (image 5) and use a mini offset spatula to smooth out the batter from edge-to-edge. Bake until the edges begin to pull away from the pan (image 6) and a cake tester inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean.
You'll notice a lot of slices of pumpkin cake and banana bread in photos and in cafés and bakeries have a dark line towards the bottom of the slice: that line is a layer of "gummy" batter where the heat of the oven didn't quite reach. It's a sign that the cake is under-baked and of cake collapse where the structure of the crumb wasn't set enough before taking the cake out of the oven to cool.
Tip: Let the cake cool in the pan for 10–20 minutes until firm enough to transfer onto a wire rack to cool completely.
Top Pumpkin Bread Baking Tips
Your pumpkin bread will take over an hour to bake. Be patient: pumpkin is considered a "heavy" ingredient that can weigh down the batter. More pumpkin means it takes more time to evaporate/dry the crumb of the cake and set the structure. You don't want to end up with a gummy unbaked layer at the bottom of the loaf. Some people are okay with that, but to me, that is unacceptable.
Remember to use a few methods to check if your cake is done baking before you remove it from the oven. Otherwise, if the crumb is even a little under-baked, you will notice cake collapse, which is most obvious when you cut into the loaf: you will see a thin line of dark dense cake. That's under-baked moist cake batter that collapsed.
Also, if you are planning on adding cranberries, use dried cranberries because fresh and frozen cranberries causes pockets of gumminess in the cake surrounding the berries. Not good.
Pumpkin Bread FAQs
You may not have enough flour to absorb the moisture from the pumpkin purée, leading to a gummy bottom on your quick breads. It may also be underbaked. Use a few methods to check if your cake is done baking before you remove it from the oven to avoid cake collapse, creating a thin line of dark, dense cake on the bottom. The cake may also be under-leavened (meaning not enough baking powder and/or baking soda). Both are necessary in this recipe.
If your cake is dry, it's possible you may have mis-measured the oil or the pumpkin purée. Even if you forgot the eggs, the recipe would still work since it's actually almost exactly the same as this eggless healthier pumpkin bread!
A dry cake texture could also indicate too much flour or that you overworked the cake batter by stirring it too much. This would develop the gluten network leading to a dryer texture. Stir just until the wet and dry ingredients are combined, and don't keep stirring.
Other Pumpkin Desserts
Everybody loves baking with pumpkin in the fall months. Here are more desserts you can make with pumpkin, including pumpkin ice cream, pumpkin muffins with streusel on top, and pumpkin pie without evaporated milk:
If you tried this recipe for the best pumpkin loaf cake (or any other recipe on my website), please leave a ⭐ star rating and let me know how it went in the comments below. I love hearing from you!
📖 Recipe
Pumpkin Loaf Cake
Ingredients
- 250 grams bleached all-purpose flour
- 5 mL baking powder
- 5 mL baking soda
- 5 mL ground cinnamon
- 5 mL Diamond Crystal fine kosher salt
- 2.5 mL ground ginger
- 1.25 mL ground cloves
- 1.25 mL ground nutmeg
- 375 mL pumpkin purée or strained homemade pumpkin purée
- 150 grams light brown sugar
- 100 grams granulated sugar
- 125 mL canola oil
- 2 large egg(s)
- 5 mL pure vanilla extract
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350ºF (175 °C). Butter and flour a 1-pound loaf pan, either a 9x5-inch (23x12.5 cm) loaf pan (like this Nordic Ware pan on Amazon) or for a taller loaf, use an 8.5x4.5-inch (21.5x11.5 cm) loaf pan (like this Oxo pan on Amazon). Line the bottom with a rectangle of parchment. Set aside.
- In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and cloves. Set aside.
- In a large bowl, whisk together the pumpkin purée, brown sugar, granulated sugar, canola oil, eggs, and vanilla.
- Pour the dry mixture over the wet ingredients. Fold the ingredients with about 16-20 stirs just to combine them.
- Pour the batter into the prepared pan and smooth it out. Bang the pan on the counter to help remove any air pockets.
- Bake the pumpkin cake until a cake tester inserted into the centre comes out clean. This takes about 1 hour 15 minutes. Keep checking it every so often.
- Place the pan of baked pumpkin bread on a cooling rack and let it cool for 15 minutes before unmolding it on the rack to cool completely.
Notes
- Recipe substitutions and variations:
- Flour - instead of regular bleached all-purpose flour, you can use whole wheat flour but make sure it's a whole wheat all-purpose flour (and not a whole grain flour for making bread!) —check out this whole wheat pumpkin bread for inspiration
- Butter - you can replace the canola oil (or another neutral-tasting vegetable oil) in the cake recipe with butter. Use the same volume
- Eggs— if you'd like to bake pumpkin bread without the eggs, follow this healthier pumpkin bread, which has no eggs and less sugar and oil too and is vegan!
- Spices - you can use a combination of cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and cloves or pumpkin spice mix. Apple pie spices would also work
- Cranberries, raisins, or crystallized ginger - if you'd like to incorporate dried fruit in this recipe, I recommend raisins, dried cranberries (stick to dried cranberries, otherwise with fresh or frozen cranberries, you will get some gumminess around the baked fruit, which I find unpleasant), or even chopped crystalized ginger would be great in this pumpkin cake recipe—check out this cranberry pumpkin loaf
- Chocolate chip—you can easily stir a cup (175 grams) of chocolate chips into the batter before transferring it to the pan to make chocolate chip pumpkin bread.
- Most canned pumpkin purées are pretty dry, but some are watery. To be sure you aren't adding excess liquid to this pumpkin cake recipe, strain the pumpkin before measuring it. To do so:
- Set a strainer over a deep bowl and line it with a couple layers of cheesecloth.
- Place the pumpkin in the lined strainer and let drain for at least 30 minutes.
- Occasionally, give the pumpkin a stir, a press, or a squeeze to help remove any excess liquid.
- Once the pumpkin is thicker and less watery, you are ready to measure out the cup for this recipe.
- If you are using defrosted pumpkin purée, you may notice the water will separate upon defrosting. Again, this is a good reason to strain it before using.
- The baking times suggested are for a cake baked in the OXO loaf pan from Amazon with similar results, yielding a taller loaf cake.
Hello says
I only have regular Morton's Kosher salt, not fine grained, how do I sub? Thank you...
Janice says
Great question! Use half the volume if using Morton's kosher salt. I'm assuming when you say it's not fine grained that you aren't using a coarse salt that's got very large crystals? If so, I'd try to grind it down to something finer to make the distribution more even within the batter. Hope that helps!
Lori says
Hi, could you add chocolate chips to the recipe? And if so, do I change the baking time or the amount of ingredients?
Janice says
Hi Lori,
You can definitely add chocolate chips. I'd likely add up to 175 grams (1 cup) of chocolate chips to this size of a loaf cake recipe. Perhaps start with 130 grams (3/4 cup) and see how it looks (if there is just the right amount or not enough) and then add the last 1/4 cup if you think necessary.
As for the baking time, I think it will likely remain at 1 hour 15 minutes. Check on it around that time and then see if you need to add a few more minutes. Hope that helps!
Stacey Fassi says
Your recipe was perfection. I've stopped baking loaf breads because they were always either raw in the middle or gummy. This pumpkin bread recipe and your tips have me believing I can actually repeat my first success. I'll be baking this pumpkin bread all Fall and Winter. I can't wait to get back in the kitchen!
Guest says
Hi Janice. If substituting butter for the canola oil, how much butter would you recommend using for this recipe? Thank you.
Janice says
Hi, You can do 115 grams (1/2 cup) in a 1:1 substitution, but I suspect you could safely go up higher (up to 3/4 cup or 170 grams of butter). You can either incorporate melted butter into the batter, or you could switch to the creaming method of mixing, so beating together the softened butter with the sugar, then incorporating the eggs, etc. like for a cake.
Hope that helps! And here's a crash course on mixing methods to see the differences you may expect: https://bakeschool.com/baking-basics-mixing-methods/
Guest says
Janice, thank you so much for your thoughtful reply. I appreciate it!
Di says
My issue is sodium. Many of us have to eat low sodium so I thought it would be wonderful to find something without baking soda. I have low sodium baking powder but not baking soda. I try not to use salt anymore in my baking which is sad but if I want to enjoy more than a sliver of cake I have to do that. Thanks for your recipes.
Janice says
Hi, I did a little research and apparently your best bet for a sodium free equivalent for baking soda is potassium bicarbonate. Apparently this works well and I gather you can try a 1:1 substitute, BUT it has a bitter flavour, which means in recipes heavy on the baking soda, you may have to pull back on the potassium bicarbonate to avoid tasting it. I hope this might be helpful for you!
Laura says
Thank you so much for such a wonderful, uplifting post. We are doing well where I am. I too am staying in.
I was looking at options for making dinner for tomorrow and I saw an egg replacement recipe I jotted down, I did not note where I saw it at, I am afraid. I might have gotten an idea and just came up with it myself.
Here it is: (3 different recipes. do a search like on Google.
1 envelope gelatin + 1 cup boiling water. Substitute 3 Tbsp of this for every egg. Refrigerate any leftovers. No egg limit.
Another recipe says:
This is called " Egg Replacer". 1-1/2 Tbsp water 1-1/2 Tbsp melted butter (or oil) 1 tsp baking soda 1/2 tsp apple cider vinegar. 1) Whisk all ingreds together in a cup.
1 Tbsp gelatin + 3 Tbsp room temp filtered water. Use just like you'd use flax meal. You can do this for up to 4 eggs, one site said.
I have not tried any of these but I am sure I will be sooner than later. Again, thanks! and take care...
elodiesucree says
Une très belle recette, ton cake est un régal, merci pour ce beau partage, gros bisous ?