Old Fashioned Spice Cake with Caramel Frosting

This is an easy spice cake recipe with old-fashioned flavor from cloves, cinnamon, and allspice, topped with a simple cream cheese frosting with added caramel. 

❤️ Why you’ll love this recipe

The best cake for fall and winter. Is there anything better than fall and winter flavors for cakes? I think not. Be gone, boring chocolate and vanilla. This type of year we are baking pumpkin and gingerbread, molasses and peppermint, and the ever-popular spice. This recipe is everything you love about warm fall spices, without being too much. The texture is super light and moist, and the icing is perfect. Not too sweet with a hint of caramel.

Moist and soft. This old-fashioned spice cake is made totally from scratch but mixes up just as quickly as something from a boxed mix. I always find vegetable oil-based cakes to be softer and moister than butter-based cakes, so I started with vegetable oil and plenty of sugar to get the texture I was looking for.

Versatile recipe. This recipe calls for cake flour, but if you don’t have any, you can substitute a mix of all-purpose flour and cornstarch to get a similarly soft texture.  

Well-balanced spice. The spices are not overpowering, but you can definitely taste them.  This is something that can be adjusted to your taste and you can absolutely increase the spices by about 25% if you prefer a more intense spice flavor.  

You may notice that there are no molasses in this recipe.  I found that adding molasses made the cake taste more like gingerbread, even though I love that flavor and love the color added, I wanted the flavor of the spices to shine through.

The classic pairing for spice cake is cream cheese frosting, and this recipe adds a little jarred caramel sauce for a super delicious combination.  

🧂 Ingredients

This is an overview of the ingredients. You’ll find the full measurements and instructions in the printable recipe at the bottom of the page.

You’ll need the following for this old-fashioned spice cake:

• vegetable oil
• granulated sugar
• eggs
• cake flour see notes for substitutions
• baking powder
• baking soda
• salt
• cinnamon
• cloves
• ground ginger
• allspice
• milk

🥣 Equipment

• parchment
• baking spray
• mixing bowl
• wire rack

🍴Instructions

Step One: preheat the oven and prepare cake pans

Go ahead and preheat the oven to 350 and prepare your cake pans.  You can do this as a sheet cake or 2 eight inch rounds. I line the pan with parchment paper and then spray the parchment with cooking spray.  If you’ve ever had a cake ruined by sticking to the pan, you know this is NOT overkilling!

Step Two: combine ingredients

Then simply beat the oil and sugar on medium speed in a large mixing bowl and add the eggs, one by one, making sure the batter is well blended after each egg.

In a separate bowl, mix the flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, cloves, and allspice.

Add the dry ingredients to the sugar mixture in three additions, alternating with the milk.  The batter will be thin.

Pour into the prepared pans and bake for 30 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.  

Step three: make the frosting

Make sure you start with well-softened cream cheese and butter for easily blending and no lumps.

Start by beating the butter and cream cheese together, then add the caramel sauce and the vanilla.

Add the powdered sugar one cup at a time and blend until well combined.

If you are looking for an “authentic” stovetop caramel icing, that works with this cake too. See my caramel Bundt cake recipe for my favorite caramel icing.

Step Four: decorating

To be perfectly honest with you, decorating cakes is not really my thing. (Obviously.) But if you start with a cooled cake with flat layers, you’ll be fine.

Make sure the icing is not so soft that it would slide off the cake. If you want to firm it up a little, pop it in the fridge for fifteen minutes.

Then simply layer frosting in between the cake layers, and frost the sides and top.

Spice cake is best when made a day ahead of time to let the spice flavor intensify.

🥫 Storage instructions

This recipe is designed with the intent of making it simple and easy to store. If storing the cake after frosting it, it will keep up to 3 days.

🔍 FAQs

👩🏻‍🍳 Expert tips

• Make sure to just combine the wet and dry ingredients briefly while combining them.
• To prevent your frosting from melting and sliding off the cake, wait until the cake has completely cooled before frosting it.
• For a salted caramel delight, lightly sprinkle the top with flaked sea salt.

📘 Related Recipes

• Pumpkin sheet cake with cream cheese frosting is just as simple and delicious (very similar recipes, actually!)
• Soft molasses cookies have the same spices and are always a hit
• If you are more in the apple mood, Caramel Apple Cobbler is another simple, from-scratch fall dessert.
• And for a fall party, a fall sangria with pear vodka is never a bad idea!

🍽 Serve it with

🍅 make it along with me

📖 Here’s the recipe