Spice cake with cream cheese frosting
Preppy Kitchen · ♥ 5.9K likes · 171.1K views · 11 min video
Read about layer cakes in the BrightCulinary Book
Timestamp
Ingredients
Method
Techniques
- 360 g all-purpose flour
Set the oven to 350F and combine 360 g all-purpose flour with the leaveners and spices in a large bowl.
Flour and leaveners
- 2 tsp baking powder
Add two teaspoons baking powder, half a teaspoon baking soda and half a teaspoon salt.
- ½ tsp baking soda
- ½ tsp salt
- 2 tsp ground cinnamon
- 2 tsp ground ginger
- ½ tsp cloves
- ½ tsp nutmeg
Add two teaspoons ground cinnamon, two teaspoons ground ginger, half a teaspoon cloves and half a teaspoon nutmeg, grated fresh if you like.
Optionally add a heaping quarter teaspoon cardamom and half a teaspoon allspice.
- ¼ tsp cardamom
- ½ tsp allspice
Whisk until the spices, leavening and salt are evenly distributed.
- 440 g brown sugar
In a second large bowl weigh out 440 g brown sugar, breaking up the clumps by hand rather than packing it into a measuring cup.
Weighing brown sugar
- 4 whole eggs
Crack four large room temperature eggs into a separate bowl to check for shells, then add them.
Add the wet to the dry and stir until almost combined, scraping the bottom with the whisk as you turn. No mixer needed. Over mixing gives a dense cake.
Combining by hand without overmixing
Distribute the batter into two sprayed nine inch pans; the batter is loose and bakes up flat.
- 226 g unsalted butter
- 226 g cream cheese
Frosting: cream 226 g room temperature unsalted butter with 226 g softened cream cheese until mixed.
- 720 g powdered sugar
- salt
Scrape the bowl down, then add the six cups of powdered sugar slowly in a few batches on low, with an optional pinch of salt.
Centre the first layer and spread one cup of frosting on top, then add the next layer.
Assembling and swooping the frosting
Cover the cake completely, bringing the frosting down the sides and letting gravity pull it rather than scraping upward, which keeps crumbs off the tool.
Swoop the frosting with a spatula in big bold swoops that cut almost to the colour of the cake, for height and drama.