Cinnamon Cream Cheese Frosting with Pumpkin Spice Cake

Cinnamon Cream Cheese Frosting is amazing.

Tis the divine season of pumpkin spiced EVERYTHING.

Oh, how I love pumpkin spice. I’m sipping it at the coffee shop, snacking on Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Bread and feeding Pumpkin Spice Cake to my Lit Ladies Book Club.

My son has written a poem about the bread. Love that.

The ladies and my boys gobbled up the cake. It was completely gone in one evening!

The name of this cake recipe is certainly a mouthful. Normally I would call out the cake first and then the frosting. But, honestly, the frosting is the over-the-top craving-enducing element in this recipe. So I’m sticking with Cinnamon Cream Cheese Frosting with Pumpkin Spice Cake.

Cream Cheese Frosting with just a hint of cinnamon is amazing. I even make a little extra so that my boys can spread it on graham crackers for snack after school. Yu-um.

The cake and the frosting recipes come from Anne Byrn’s The Cake Mix Doctor Returns!: With 160 All-New Recipes (See all Cake Baking Books). I use all of her recipe books a lot and mix and match cakes and frostings to my liking. This combo is wonderful.

Ingredients List

1 spice cake mix (I use Betty Crocker)
1 cup canned pumpkin
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup water
3 large eggs
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground ginger
Cinnamon Cream Cheese Frosting (see below)

Method

Preheat oven to 350ºF.

Lightly grease two 9-inch cake pans and dust with flour (It’s also a good idea to get your frosting cream cheese and butter out of the refrigerator so that it is room temperature when you are ready to make the frosting).

In a large mixing bowl, add cake mix, pumpkin, oil, water, eggs, cinnamon and ginger. Using an electric mixer, blend the ingredients on low for one minute. Scrape down the sides and mix on medium for another 2 minutes.

Pour the cake batter into the cake pans, being careful to divide it as equally as possible. Smooth the tops and place the pans in the oven side by side.

Bake the cakes for 25-30 minutes until the tops spring back when lightly pressed with your finger. The cake should be starting to separate from the sides of the pan. Mine were ready at 27 minutes.

Remove the pans from the oven and place them on wire racks to cool for about 10 minutes. Run a butter knife around the edge of each cake in the pan to loosen it. Flip each one over and release it from the pan onto the wire rack. Flip again to upright and allow cakes to cool completely, about 30 minutes, before frosting.

Ingredients List for Cinnamon Cream Cheese Frosting

1 1/2 packages (12 oz) cream cheese at room temperature
6 Tbsp butter, softened
5 1/4 cups confectioners’ sugar, sifted
6-8 Tbsp milk
3 tsp vanilla extract
3/4 tsp ground cinnamon

Note: This is 1.5 times the original recipe. I hate having to stretch my frosting and having none left to taste in the bowl and spread on graham crackers.

Method

Place the cream cheese and butter in a large mixing bowl. Blend with an electric mixer on low speed until fluffy, 30 seconds.

Stop the machine and add 1 cup of the confectioners sugar, vanilla and cinnamon. Blend with the mixer on low speed until the sugar is incorporated, 1 minute.

Add the remaining sugar about a cup at a time and mix on low. Frost cake when completely cooled.

I like to store this cake in a cake saver in the refrigerator. The cake stays moist and the cool cream cheese frosting is heavenly.