Today on Sugar Spun Run, I'll be showing you how to make my spice cake.
Hey Sugar Spun Bakers, Sam here! And today, I am so excited to be sharing another carefully tested,
well researched, and perfected recipe.
Now, some of you who have been around, following me for a long time
know I already had a spice cake recipe on the blog.
However, I was getting too many comments from people saying they
were having problems with the cake caving too much,
just wasn't super thrilled with the comments I was getting about it.
And I want everyone to have an incredible experience,
incredible results every time you make my cakes, so this recipe has been revamped.
You'll still be able to find the original recipe on YouTube if you are a hardcore fan of that one,
but I am pretty excited about today's new recipe and can't wait share this one with you.
It's fluffy and moist and perfectly flavored with all the spices.
Let's go ahead and just get right to it. You'll first wanna preheat
your oven to three fifty degrees Fahrenheit.
Next, you're going to need a large mixing bowl.
And to this, we are going to add two and two thirds cups of all purpose flour.
Now for the sugar for today's recipe, we are going to be starting with dark brown sugar.
Dark brown sugar is made with molasses. It helps give the spice
cake a nice, true spice cake flavor—perfect
for fall.
You'll need one and a half cups, and this is firmly packed dark brown sugar.
We will be using a little bit of regular granulated sugar,
just a half cup of that. Then for our leavening agents,
we'll start with one and a half teaspoons of baking powder and a half teaspoon of baking soda.
We'll also add a teaspoon of regular table salt.
Now we get to our spices, starting with cinnamon.
You’ll two and a half teaspoons of ground cinnamon,
one teaspoon of ground ginger, where's the ginger?
There we go. Three fourths teaspoon of all spice,
three fourths teaspoon of ground cloves,
and finally just one fourth teaspoon of ground nutmeg.
We'll wanna get everything nicely mixed together.
I'm just gonna use a whisk.
But first, I'm just gonna kind of stab this to help break up that brown sugar.
Ideally, we will work out any lumps that are in that brown sugar.
Packing the brown sugar before you add it usually helps with this.
It'll help break up most of the lumps, which is why I will still lightly pack my brown sugar
even if I'm using a scale to measure it,
which is how I always do measure it.
Look, see those lumps. We do not want those in our cake.
Let's get them broken up. I think for one of the first times in my filming career,
I might have used a bowl that's large enough.
Okay, this looks pretty good to me. Only a few very small clumps remaining,
those will work out as we continue on with the recipe.
So next, you are going to need some butter.
This is twelve tablespoons of unsalted butter.
I have melted it, but I also wanna note that it's no longer super hot.
It's no longer even really warm to the touch. It's had a little bit of time to cool
while I've been preparing the dry ingredients.
So we’ll add this into our bowl. And you guys know how I am with butter,
we don't wanna waste any of that. Let's make sure we get all of it in here.
And I know I've said this before,
but one of the best ways to get the perfect balance of flavor
and that nice, soft, moist texture when you're making cakes is to use a blend of butter and oil.
We've added our butter, but we're also going to be adding a half cup of a neutral cooking oil,
usually either vegetable oil or canola oil.
Now, I could work everything together with my spatula.
That would be fine, but I am just gonna grab my electric hand mixer here.
It's gonna make the job a little bit easier for me, and I'm just going to stir everything together
until I have a nice smooth batter. Oh,
or I’m not becasue it's not plugged in. There we go.
And I say smooth batter, but at this point,
it's really—what I'm really looking for is a batter that's completely combined.
It’s gonna be a little bit dry, a little bit stiff,
which is one of the reasons I like to use the mixer rather than a spatula,
which is just a little bit more physical effort.
I don’t know if you guys can tell, but I'm not all about the hard manual labor here.
Okay, so you can see everything is well combined.
The important thing is that there are no streaks of dry flour remaining.
I’m just gonna use my spatula to scrape the sides and bottom and look for any.
But all of the flour mixture has been coated with that butter and oil.
Alright, next, we are going to add three large eggs.
Now ideally, these should be at room temperature.
It’s just going to help everything combine a little bit better.
And I always like to crack my eggs in a separate dish, just helps me keep from getting any shell in the bowl
and then if you've ever cracked a bad egg,
you know how terrible that is, you do not wanna crack a bad egg into your batter
because then you have to toss everything.
Oops. See, look at that. This is why we use a separate bowl.
We're also going to add a table spoon of vanilla extract,
which just gives the spice cake the perfect balance of flavor,
really—the vanilla really complements the spices really well.
And we're going to stir everything together until the mixture's nice and smooth.
Okay, now we're starting to look like a cake batter here instead of like a dry, crumbly cookie dough.
We're not done yet though. We are going to need to add one cup of sour cream.
I recommend using a full-fat sour cream.
This is like my new secret ingredient with cakes. I love what it does to the texture.
And we'll stir this in until it's combined. And just as with the eggs,
it's ideal if your sour cream is at room temperature.
However, I would be lying if I said mine was every time I made this cake.
And the last thing that we're going to need to add today is one fourth cup of whole milk.
This is looking pretty good,
but I do want to scrape the sides and bottom of the bowl to make sure I have a nice, uniform batter.
I don't know if you can see that, but there was some thicker,
darker, batter hiding on the bottom of the bowl,
so I'm glad we're doing this. We're getting everything nicely combined.
Okay, so today's recipe can be baked as a sheet cake in a thirteen by nine pan,
into nine inch round pans, or today I'm going to be baking it as a layer cake in two eight pants.
Now, I'm just going to spray these cake pans with a little bit of baking spray.
You do wanna use a baking spray that is made with flour,
not a cooking spray. I’m just gonna spray the sides and bottom.
If you don't have baking spray, you can grease and flour the pants instead.
Just make sure to tap out any extra flour.
Make sure I have a nice, even layer. And even though I've sprayed the pans,
I always, always use a round of parchment paper on the bottom.
This is just going to give me that extra insurance that the cake is not going to stick,
which is the worst thing that could happen. I guess there are worse things,
but thinking about making this cake, it's the worst thing that could happen.
Now we'll just evenly divide the batter into these two pans.
I’m gonna do the best I can. I'm really bad at eyeballing this.
Usually I'll use my scale to make sure I've truly divided the cake evenly.
And it is a pretty thick batter, that's normal.
And we'll bake these in our three hundred and fifty degree Fahrenheit preheated oven.
Now, for two eight inch pants, I find the cakes typically take about thirty eight minutes to bake,
but this can vary pending on the particular cake pans that you're using.
Like, if they're darker, they'll make faster, lighter,
they'll bake for less time. I'll typically start checking my cakes around thirty five minutes.
These took about thirty eight minutes. The best way to tell that they're done is if you touch the cake
and it lightly springs back to the touch,
that's a good indicator. It shouldn't seem liquidy.
And a toothpick inserted in the center should come out clean or preferably with a few moist crumbs,
but no wet batter. Once your cakes have cooled in their pans for about ten or fifteen minutes,
you'll wanna take a butter knife, run it along the edge of the pan.
Yes, we greased the pan. This is just an extra security step,
just in case it stuck or you missed a spot it happens.
And we are going to carefully invert these onto our cooling racks.
Still a little warm, don't burn yourself. Look at that, comes out nice and clean
and remove your parchment paper security blanket,
and we're going to let these cool completely—one hundred percent—before we try frosting them.
So once your cakes are cooled completely, we can go ahead and decorate them.
I’m gonna make this really quick. You could absolutely level your cakes,
but they bake pretty flat. And since this one,
you know, it's just going to my family, it doesn't need to win any awards,
I’m just gonna leave them as is. I do like to put a little dab of frosting on my cake platter.
Just to keep the cake from sliding around. There is a cake platter right here.
It just blends in with the camera. My sister said you can't see it.
Now again, this is just my cream cheese frosting.
It pairs super, super well with this cake, really brings out the flavors.
They just complement each other really nicely. And so much for my cake not sliding.
There we go. A nice layer right here in the middle.
Also, the last time I leveled the cake, somebody gave me a hard time because I leveled the cake
and then I didn't level the frosting and that was—that was a big deal.
They were very mad about that. Now,
with this cake, I like to do a lot of frosting on top
and then just kinda do a semi-naked layer around the edges.
Alright, let's go ahead and cut into this cake.
Take a look at it. Take a taste of it.
I don’t know why I always just get such bad anxiety when I cut into a cake,
like I’m gonna do something wrong.
And that is how you make my new and improved spice cake.
I really do hope you guys enjoy this recipe. If you try it out,
please leave me a comment and let me know what you think.
I always love hearing from you. Thank you so much for watching and I'll see you next time.
This is so good.