Recipe Roundup

37 Fall Cakes Full of Baking Spice and Everything Nice

Bake your way into cozy mode.

By Joe Sevier and The Editors of Epicurious

August 2, 2023

Pumpkin and cookie butter cake topped with toasted meringue and pumpkin seeds on a baking sheet with a side of pumpkins...

Fall cakes hit a sweet spot—as the weather cools, baking feels right again, and the apples, pumpkins, pecans, and warming spices that epitomize the season truly shine in cake form. Below you'll find our favorite fall cake ideas, including easy Bundt cakes and loaves, impressive layer cakes for birthday celebrations, and lots of cinnamon-spiced, dinner-party-worthy desserts that celebrate the season. Get ready for gooey caramel and toffee, freshly grated nutmeg, swirls of cranberry, and pops of juicy grapes—once you start baking these cakes, you might forget all about pie.

Photo by Chelsea Kyle, Food Styling by Katherine Sacks
1/37
Caramel Apple Drip Cake With Candied Walnuts
The best fall cakes bring nostalgic autumnal flavors to life. Grated apples in the filling give this spice cake a moist, dense texture, while the dripping caramel glaze and pretty caramelized walnuts make it a true showstopper for any special occasion.
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Photo by Chelsea Kyle, Food Styling by Anna Stockwell
2/37
Majestic and Moist New Year's Honey Cake
We promise, this is the best honey cake you've ever tasted. It's rich, nicely spiced, and majestic in flavor and stature. Better yet: it keeps wonderfully, if you can hold off on gobbling the whole thing.
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Photo by Joseph De Leo, Food Styling by Kaitlin Wayne
3/37
Apple Sticky Toffee Pudding
Go ahead, give your apple cake a luscious drizzle of toffee sauce.
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Photo by Joseph De Leo, Food Styling by Erika Joyce
4/37
Grape Cake With Hazelnut Streusel
Any kind (or mix) of seedless grapes will work for this crowd-ready snack cake. We love using Thomcord grapes, which give you all the intense juicy punch of a Concord grape without the annoying seeds.
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Photo by Chelsea Kyle, Prop Styling by Astrid Chastka, Food Styling by Katherine Sacks
5/37
Spiced Hazelnut-Pear Cake With Chocolate Sauce
This cake is scented with nutmeg, cinnamon, and cloves—all the crucial elements of pumpkin spice. Wine-poached pears add richness to the dessert and make a stunning presentation.
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Photo by Dana Gallagher
6/37
Maple Butternut Sheet-Pan Cake
Baking this layer cake on a sheet pan means easy, even layers that won't dome or crack. Classic fall cake flavors come together beautifully here.
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Photo by Romulo Yanes
7/37
Pumpkin Spice Bundt Cake With Buttermilk Icing
There are two arguments for making this recipe instead of a pumpkin pie: 1) it doesn't require messing with pie crust and 2) it keeps for several days, making it a great option for any drop-in guests.
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Photo by Chelsea Kyle, Prop Styling by Nathaniel James, Food Styling by Anna Hampton
8/37
Pumpkin and Cookie-Butter Sheet Cake With Toasted Meringue
Speculoos cookies, represented here in their ground, “butter” form, add a spicy complexity to pumpkin purée for a new spin on the classic fall dessert. The dense, moist cake is topped with a light and fluffy meringue. Got leftover cookie butter? Make this superlative salted speculoos shake.
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Photo & Food Styling by Kendra Vaculin
9/37
Cranberry-Orange Snacking Cake
This simple snacking cake could be breakfast—or an after-school pick-me-up. It’s a great way to put any lingering cans of cranberry sauce to good use.
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Photo by Joseph De Leo, Food Styling by Anna Stockwell
10/37
Olive Oil Apple Cake With Spiced Sugar
This dairy-free cake hits all the right autumnal notes: it’s earthy thanks to the olive oil and warm thanks to the spices. Just be sure to choose your apples wisely—a softer type will melt into the cake, while firmer apples (such as Granny Smith) will give the cake a coarser texture.
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Photo by Chelsea Kyle, Prop Styling by Beatrice Chastka, Food Styling by Olivia Mack Anderson
11/37
Pumpkin Cheesecake With Bourbon–Sour Cream Topping
This is one of our favorite cheesecake recipes for fall, thanks to the caramel-rich flavor of bourbon and the tang of sour cream.
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Photo by Christopher Testani
12/37
Double Ginger Sticky Toffee Pudding
The gooey toffee sauce is both absorbed by the cake and served on the side. For a glossy, polished presentation, brush the still-warm cake with a clean pastry brush after it comes out of the pan, which will remove some of the excess syrup.
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Photo by Travis Rainey, Food styling by Micah Marie Morton
13/37
Easy Coffee Cake
This no-mixer cake recipe is one of our favorite options for a relaxed Sunday brunch.
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Photo by Joseph De Leo, Food Styling by Drew Aichele
14/37
Pistachio Cake
This fragrant cake pairs shelled pistachios with lots of orange zest. The active prep time is just 15 minutes, and you'll have this cake cooling on your counter in less than an hour.
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Following stints at StarChefs and Saveur, Joe joined Epicurious in 2016 where he’s written about how to make the very best biscuits, the singularity of third-culture cooking, and the ultimate cream cheese frosting. Currently, he works across both BA and Epi as the senior SEO editor for cooking stories, which ... Read More

Senior SEO Editor, Cooking

The Epicurious editorial team develops original recipes, and publishes stories about cooking better, faster, and more creatively, sustainably, and affordably. See our full masthead, here. ... Read More

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