Eggnog Cake with Eggnog Buttercream
Today we are sharing a delicious scratch recipe for Eggnog Cake with Eggnog Buttercream Frosting!
This classic holiday cake recipe is moist, has a lovely soft texture, and delicious spiced flavor.
Table of Contents
Why we Love It
There are so many reasons to love this Eggnog Cake recipe! Here are just a few:
- Moist, tender cake layers
- Wonderful spiced flavor from cinnamon and nutmeg
- Richness of flavor from the eggnog
- Makes a perfect winter birthday cake recipe, holiday cake, and more!
How to Make Eggnog Cake
You can find the full, printable Eggnog Cake recipe further down in this post, but here is a quick rundown of our steps!
- Preheat: Preheat oven to 350 and grease and flour three 8 inch cake pans- we also like to line our pans with parchment.{This recipe uses the Reverse Creaming Method of mixing.}
- Combine Wet Ingredients: In a medium sized bowl, combine the eggs, vanilla, vegetable oil and eggnog. Blend with a fork to combine.
- Combine Dry Ingredients: In the bowl of your mixer add the flour, baking powder, salt, sugar, cinnamon and
nutmeg. - Add Butter to Dry Ingredients: Mix on low speed as you gradually add the pieces of butter. Mix until the dry ingredients
are crumbly and moistened by the butter. - Half of Egg Mixture: Add ½ of the egg mixture and beat on medium speed for 1 ½ minutes, scrape the
bottom and sides of the bowl. - Two More Additions of Egg Mixture: Add the remaining egg mixture in 2 additions, mixing at medium speed for 20 seconds
after each addition. - Fill the Pans: Scrape the bottom and sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula and pour into the prepared baking pans.
- Time to Bake! Bake at 350 degrees F for 25 to 30 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean or with just a few crumbs attached. Makes 7 ½ cups batter. Works well for cupcakes
Eggnog Buttercream
This Eggnog Buttercream tastes fantastic and is so easy to make! It is a delicious combination of butter, powdered sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, vanilla, a pinch of salt, and a splash of eggnog.
It behaves much like our Classic Vanilla Buttercream Frosting, but has added richness and flavor from the eggnog and spices!
This eggnog frosting recipe works perfectly as a filling and frosting, and pipes perfectly also.
More Spice Cakes
We love spice cakes, especially in the fall and winter months! In addition to today's Eggnog Cake, you will have to add these other recipes to your must-bake list!
Some of our favorites are our Spice Cake from cake mix, Pumpkin Spice Cake, Cherry Spice Cake, and gingerbread cake.
More Eggnog Cakes
If you prefer working with cake mixes or if you like to keep great doctored cake mix recipes on hand for a super quick and easy dessert, you've got to try our Eggnog Cake (doctored cake mix) Recipe!
It has all of the wonderful spiced flavor of our scratch eggnog cake recipe, and can be whipped up in no time. We also have an Eggnog Rum Cake from cake mix that couldn't be simpler to make- so decadent!
Don't miss our delicious Eggnog Pound Cake and Caramel Eggnog Pound Cake recipes as well! These simple scratch pound cakes are so flavorful and can be whipped up in no time.
Make sure to check out our other holiday cake recipes! You'll find favorites like our scratch Red Velvet Cake ,Italian Cream Cake, Carrot Cake and German Chocolate Cake!
Thanks so much for stopping by today, we hope that you enjoy this homemade Eggnog Cake! Make sure to check out our full Cake Recipes section as well as our collection of free Cake Decorating Tutorials!
If you are interested in Christmas and winter cake designs, we have lots of decorating tutorials to share with you!
Have you made this? We would LOVE for you to leave a ⭐️ rating as well as a comment and photo below! We really appreciate your feedback!
Eggnog Cake with Eggnog Buttercream- A Scratch Recipe
Ingredients
For the Eggnog Cake Layers•
- *Preheat oven to 350. Grease & flour three 8 inch pans.
- 3 cups (342g) cake flour **(if you do not have cake flour, see below)
- 2 cups (400g) granulated sugar
- 1 Tablespoon (15g) baking powder
- ½ teaspoon (2g) salt
- 2 teaspoons (6g) cinnamon
- 1 teaspoon (3g) nutmeg
- 2 sticks (226g) unsalted butter, slightly softened (should hold shape but dent when pressed)
- 3 large eggs plus 1 egg yolk
- 2 teaspoons (8g) vanilla extract
- ¼ cup (54g) vegetable oil
- 1 ¼ cups (313g) eggnog
For the Eggnog Buttercream Frosting
- 2 sticks (226g) unsalted butter, softened
- 6-7 cups (690-805g) powdered sugar
- ½ teaspoon (1g) cinnamon
- ½ teaspoon (1g) nutmeg
- ½ teaspoon (2g) salt
- ⅓ cup (86g) eggnog - add more a teaspoon at a time if needed.
- 2 teaspoons 8g vanilla extract
Instructions
For the Eggnog Cake Layers
- {This recipe uses the Reverse Creaming Method of mixing.}
- In a medium sized bowl, combine the eggs, vanilla, vegetable oil and eggnog. Blend with a fork to combine.
- In the bowl of your mixer add the flour, baking powder, salt, sugar, cinnamon and
nutmeg. - Mix on low speed as you gradually add the pieces of butter. Mix until the dry ingredients
are crumbly and moistened by the butter. - There should be no dry looking flour in the bowl. Scrape sides and bottom of bowl.
- Add ½ of the egg mixture and beat on medium speed for 1 ½ minutes, scrape the
bottom and sides of the bowl. - Add the remaining egg mixture in 2 additions, mixing at medium speed for 20 seconds
after each addition. Scrape the bottom and sides of the bowl and pour into
baking pans. - Bake at 350 degrees for 25 to 30 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean or with
just a few crumbs attached. Makes 7 ½ cups batter. Works well for cupcakes
For the Eggnog Buttercream Frosting
- Cream the softened butter until smooth. Blend in vanilla, nutmeg, cinnamon and salt.
- Add ½ of the powdered sugar and most of the eggnog. Beat at medium speed
until the powered sugar is incorporated. - Add the remaining powered sugar and eggnog and mix at medium speed another 3 to 4 minutes scraping the bottom and sides of the bowl occasionally.
- I slow down the mixer to very slow (#2 on the Kitchenaid) for 1 to 2 minutes. This will help eliminate air pockets in the
buttercream. - The recipe and be doubled or halved.
- Can be frozen in an airtight container for at least 3 months, thaw on the countertop
and remix.
Notes
(plain in UK). For each cup of flour, remove 2 Tablespoons (14g) flour and
replace with 2 Tablespoons cornstarch. For this recipe you will be removing 6 Tablespoons (42g) flour and replacing it with 6 Tablespoons corn starch. Whisk
for 30 seconds to combine. All purpose bleached flour will give you a more
tender cake, but you can also use all purpose unbleached flour.Will hold up to
fondant
I'm trying this out for Christmas for sure
I followed the recipe exactly, but the cakes disintegrated coming out of the pans. I cooled them first, then inverted them. Any ideas what might have happened?
That being said, the cake is delicious. Very egg-noggy. I'm standing here eating the pieces with my fingers....
Hi Maryellen, Isn't that just so frustrating, I am sorry there was a problem. Did you grease and flour the pans or use one of the commercial "cake release" products? You could also add a wax paper circle to the bottom of the cake pan to help the cake release (grease and flour the wax paper also). If you accidentally added too much baking powder or sugar that could cause it to fall apart.
You only cool it gir10 Minuit than inverted
Hi Rosa, Cool the cakes in the pan 10 to 15 minutes then turn out
I made this back in December, and I must say this is now one of my most favorite cakes. The texture of the cake was so velvety smooth! The cake was very moist, but still had a great deal of substance to hold up to the icing. I made this cake for my husbands birthday a few weeks ago and tweeked it just a bit!! I substituted buttermilk for eggnog, browned the butter, and added pecans!! The whole family loved it. I am going to play with it some ore to make a lemon cake for Easter!!! Thank you for sharing this recipe, it is now my go to!! ?
Hi Shannon! I'm so happy that you love this recipe and love that you've been able to experiment & come up with a new version! The buttermilk/browned butter & pecan version sounds fabulous! Thank you for the feedback and for sharing your variations! xoxo
Can this cake be baked in a bundt/tube pan or 13x9? If so how would you adjust cooking time? Thanks
HI Betty, You could bake this recipe in a 13x9 pan. Bake at 350 for 35 to 40 minutes. You could place a rose nail in the center of the pan for more even baking. I'm not sure how well it will work in a bundt pan.
Would this recipe with for a 6" four layer cake? Meaning would it hold up with 4 layers? And what about cupcakes?! ?
Thanks!
Tammy
Hi Tammy, Yes, you could use this recipe. I use 2 cups of batter for 6 inch pans and this recipe has 7 1/2 cups so you will need to use slightly less in each pan to have enough for 4 layers. It will hold up to 4 layers but you should fill and stack two layers, place four dowels into those two layers. Place the remaining 2 cakes on a cake circle (cut to the size of the 6"cakes) After filling the layers place on the dowels. This will give the final cake stability. Remember to settle the cakes before the final frosting. If you are not familiar with settling, Melissa has a video showing this in the video Baking a Cake from start to Finish. Let me know if you have other questions.
Hi Bebe,
Could you explain the technique of putting a rose nail in the centre of a 9" x 13" cake for even baking, please? I am so interested in learning more about this.