Applesauce Cake

This ultra moist apple sauce cake is simple to make, and so delicious! This homemade bundt cake has wonderful spiced flavor and a heavenly caramel glaze.

Keep this recipe in mind as a year-round favorite, but we especially crave spice cakes and apple cakes in the fall and winter months!

Why we Love It

There are many reasons to love this Applesauce Cake. Here are just a few!

• Super moist from the applesauce in the recipe
• Wonderful warm spiced flavor
• Delicious homemade glaze (topped with toffee bits)!
• Bundt Cakes are always a favorite- so simple and easy to decorate!
• Makes a great fall birthday cake recipe, Thanksgiving cake, potluck dessert, and more!

Ingredients for Applesauce Cake

Here's a quick look at the main ingredients for our cake. You can find the full listing, including ingredients for the caramel glaze, in our recipe card at the bottom of this post!

Applesauce adds light apple flavor and lots of moisture to the cake.

Cake flour makes for a tender crumb (as it has less protein than all purpose flour which reduces gluten formation).

Apple Spice adds the delicious flavor of warm spices to the cake (including cinnamon, nutmeg, and allspice).

Cream Cheese adds richness and moisture to the cake. Many of our "velvet cake recipes" call for softened cream cheese as well.

How to Make Applesauce Cake

You can find the full, printable Applesauce Cake further down in this post. Here is a quick rundown of our steps!

• Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F. Grease and flour a bundt or tube pan.
• In a medium bowl, whisk the cake flour, apple pie spice, baking powder, baking soda, and salt for 30 seconds and set aside.

• In another bowl combine the vegetable oil, applesauce, and vanilla extract. Set aside.

• In the bowl of your mixer, add the butter, cream cheese and mix at medium speed until smooth.

• Gradually add the sugar and mix at medium speed for 2-3 minutes.

• Add the room temperature eggs one at a time, mixing after each until the egg yolk has blended.
• With the mixer on low speed, alternately add the flour mixture and the applesauce mixture, beginning and ending with the flour mixture (We did 3 additions of the dry mixture, 2 additions of wet).
• Slightly increase the mixer speed just until combined.
• Scoop the batter into the prepared tube pan or bundt pan.

• Bake at 325 degrees for 40-45 minutes.  Check your cake at about 40 minutes using a long wooden skewer or a toothpick to determine doneness.  Bake until the toothpick  comes out clean or with just a few crumbs attached.  Baking times can vary! It may take longer in your oven.

• Allow the cake to cool in the cake pan on a wire rack for ten minutes before turning out.

Caramel Glaze

This applesauce cake tastes amazing all on its own, but we finished ours with a homemade caramel glaze. Apple, spices, and caramel are such a great combination (as with our Caramel Apple Cake)!

This is a simple combination of brown sugar, butter, salt, heavy cream, and vanilla extract. We also add a bit of light corn syrup as it prevents sugar crystallization.

The caramel sauce is prepared in a saucepan, and then cooled before using. It will thicken more as it cools.

You can speed up the cooling by pouring it into a long casserole dish and refrigerating.

We've used caramel glaze for all sorts of cakes, from Banana Pound Cake to Apple Bundt Cake, Apple Caramel Cake, and more.

Decorating the Cake

You can spoon the cooled glaze over the cake as with our Maple Pound Cake, but today we used a disposable piping bag with the tip snipped away for a little more control.

Here's the finished cake! We topped it with a sprinkling of toffee bits. We hope that you enjoy this recipe as much as we have!

Recipe FAQs

More Fall Cake Recipes

We've made many fall cake recipes over the years as well as classic cakes that are popular for the holidays!

Some of our most popular are Pumpkin Cake, Gingerbread Cake, Spice Cake, and our Carrot Cake Recipe! We also have a great Apple Dapple Cake recipe if you're looking for another apple cake!

Applesauce Cake

BY Melissa and Bebe

This ultra moist apple sauce cake is simple to make, and so delicious! This homemade bundt cake has wonderful spiced flavor and a heavenly caramel glaze.

Prep Time: 20 minutes mins

Cook Time: 45 minutes mins

Course: Dessert

Servings: 15 servings

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Ingredients

• ▢ 8 oz Cream Cheese, softened (We use one package cream cheese, full fat)
• ▢ 1 ½ sticks unsalted butter, softened (168g total)
• ▢ 2 cups granulated sugar (400g)
• ▢ 4 large eggs, room temperature (to save time you can warm them in a bowl of very warm water for 5 min)
• ▢ 3 cups Cake Flour- see Notes for substitution (342g)
• ▢ 1 teaspoon Baking powder (4g)
• ▢ 1 ½ teaspoons Baking soda (7g)
• ▢ ½ teaspoon Salt (3g)
• ▢ 1 ½ teaspoons Apple Pie Spice (5g)
• ▢ 1 ¼ cup Applesauce (312g)
• ▢ 1 teaspoon Vanilla Extract (4g)
• ▢ ⅓ cup Vegetable oil (67g) we used canola oil

Topping

• ▢ We added a sprinkling of toffee bits as a topping (We used Heath toffee bits)

Caramel Sauce

• ▢ ½ stick unsalted butter (57g)
• ▢ 1 cup light brown sugar (packed into measuring cup) (217g)
• ▢ ½ cup heavy cream (126g)
• ▢ ½ teaspoon salt (2g)
• ▢ 1 teaspoon vanilla extract (4g)
• ▢ 1 Tablespoon light corn syrup (18g)

Instructions

• Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F. Grease and flour a tube pan or bundt pan. (Ours was a 15 cup pan with 12 cup baking capacity. This recipe makes 8 cups of batter.)
• In a medium bowl, whisk the cake flour, apple pie spice, baking powder, baking soda, and salt for 30 seconds and set aside.
• In another bowl combine the vegetable oil, applesauce, and vanilla extract. Set aside.
• In the bowl of your mixer, add the butter, cream cheese and mix at medium speed until smooth.
• Gradually add the sugar and mix at medium speed for 2-3 minutes.
• Add the room temperature eggs one at a time, mixing after each until the egg yolk has blended.
• With the mixer on low speed, alternately add the flour mixture and the applesauce mixture, beginning and ending with the flour mixture (We did 3 additions of the dry mixture, 2 additions of wet). Slightly increase the mixer speed just until combined.
• Scoop the batter into the prepared bundt pan.
• Bake at 325 degrees for 40-45 minutes.  Check your cake at about 40 minutes using a long wooden skewer or a toothpick to determine doneness.  Bake until the toothpick  comes out clean or with just a few crumbs attached. Baking times can vary! It may take longer in your oven.
• Allow the cake to cool, in the pan, on a cooling rack for 10 minutes before turning out.
• This recipe makes approximately 8 cups of batter.

Caramel Glaze

• Using a medium size saucepan (deep enough to prevent boil over) melt the butter over medium heat.
• Add the brown sugar and the remaining ingredients and heat on medium high heat.
• Stir to blend, try to keep mixture off the sides of the pan. Once the mixture begins to boil, reduce the heat to low.
• Simmer for 6 minutes, checking often to make sure that it is not going to boil over. It should still be bubbling. After 6 minutes, remove from heat.
• Keep in mind that the caramel with thicken up a bit as it cools. You can pour it into a long glass casserole dish if you want it to cool more quickly. We often refrigerate to cool it off as well.
• Makes about 1 cup caramel sauce. It can be kept in the refrigerator in an airtight container up to 2 weeks.

Notes

Substitution for Cake Flour:

(Using all purpose flour (plain in UK) to make Cake Flour) For each cup of flour in a recipe, remove 2 Tablespoons of flour and replace with 2 Tablespoons cornstarch (cornflour in the UK). This recipe has 3 cups of flour so you will measure out 3 cups of all purpose flour, remove 6 Tablespoons and replace with 6 Tablespoons cornstarch, whisk to blend

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