Pecan Caramel Bundt Cake
This heavenly Pecan Caramel Bundt Cake would make the perfect dessert for Thanksgiving and fall gatherings!
We just love pound cakes and bundt cakes! Today's recipe is so delicious with a flavorful blend of chopped pecans, cinnamon, a hint of brown sugar, and a luscious homemade caramel drip.
This moist cake is sure to become a favorite, we hope that you enjoy it!
Table of Contents
How to Make Pecan Caramel Bundt Cake
*You can find the full, printable cake recipe further down in this post. Here is a quick rundown of our steps!
Grease and flour a bundt cake pan (or tube pan). Preheat oven to 325 degrees F.
In a separate bowl, whisk the dry ingredients: flour, cinnamon, salt, and baking powder for 30 seconds to combine, set aside for later.
Next, cream the softened unsalted butter with the paddle attachment in your mixer until smooth. Gradually add the white sugar and mix for two minutes. And light brown sugar and beat two minutes more.
Add the room temperature eggs one at a time, mixing after each to incorporate.
Next, add the vanilla extract to the l cup of milk. Add the flour mixture alternately with the milk to the butter, sugar, egg mixture. Begin and end with the dry ingredients. I add the dry 3 times and milk twice.
Fold in the chopped pecans.
Bake at 325 degrees for 55-60 minutes or until a toothpick or long wooden skewer comes out clean or with just a few crumbs attached
Allow to cool in the pan on a wire rack for about 10 minutes before turning out.
How to Make the Caramel Drip
This simple caramel drip tastes amazing and the sweetened condensed milk gives it an even richer flavor. If you are looking for a caramel sauce that doesn't call for condensed milk, check out the caramel recipe in our apple toffee caramel cake! It's a great choice for this cake also!
*You can find our full, printable caramel sauce recipe below but here is a quick rundown of our steps!:
- In a medium saucepan combine brown sugar, sweetened condensed milk, and light corn syrup and heat on medium-high, stirring often to prevent burning. Try to keep the mixture off the sides of the pan.
The purpose of the light corn syrup in this caramel recipe is to prevent the formation of sugar crystals (which results in a gritty texture).
- Once the mixture comes to a boil, reduce to low heat and simmer for 5-6 minutes. Stir often. Remove from heat and stir in butter, vanilla extract, and salt.
- After it cools a bit, pour into a a heat proof bowl. Keep in mind that it will thicken more as it cools. You can refrigerate to speed up the cooling process.
Decorating the Pecan Caramel Bundt Cake
Once cooled, move the bundt cake to a cake plate or pedestal.
Now it's time to add the caramel drip! You can apply the caramel to the cake with a spoon, but for the most control, I prefer to spoon the caramel into a disposable piping bag (or even a ziplock bag) and snip the tip away to create a small opening. Apply the caramel to the cake.
This caramel sauce perfectly complements the pecans, cinnamon, and brown sugar in the recipe!
Top with chopped pecans (I used both finely and coarsely chopped pecans). I love how a simple drip can dress up a cake!
More Pecan and Caramel Cake Recipes to Share
Pecans, caramel, and spices are the cozy flavors that everyone seems to crave the most in the fall. We've made many delicious fall cake recipes which you can find here: Favorite Fall Cake Recipes.
Here are just a few of our cake recipes with pecans, caramel, or both!
This delicious cake makes for a beautiful slice!
Love Bundt Cakes and Pound Cakes? Try these!
We have a few more bundt cakes and pound cakes for you to put on your must-bake list!
There are so many reasons to love these recipes- they are easy to make, freeze perfectly, and require very little decoration- just a simple drip or a dollop of cream or ice cream and you're all set!
Italian Cream Bundt Cake- Cake Mix Recipe
You can find these and even more in our Recipes section!
Pecan Caramel Bundt Cake
This moist Pecan Caramel Bundt Cake is so moist and flavorful! It has a delightful flavor combination of pecans, cinnamon, brown sugar, and a caramel drip.
Ingredients
- 3 sticks (339 g) unsalted butter, softened
- 2 cups (400g) white sugar
- 1 cup (217g) light brown sugar (packed into cup)
- 5 large eggs, room temperature
- 3 cups (375 g) all purpose flour, (not self-rising)
- ½ teaspoon (2 g) baking powder
- ½ teaspoon (3g) salt
- 1 teaspoon (3g) cinnamon
- 1 cup (242 g) whole milk
- 2 teaspoons (8g) vanilla
- ½ cup (55g) pecans finely chopped
For the Caramel Sauce
- 1 can (14oz) Sweetened Condensed Milk (substitution in Notes below)
- 1 cup light brown sugar (217g)
- 2 tablespoons unsalted butter
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract (4g)
- 1 (18g) tablespoon light corn syrup (18g)
- ½ teaspoon salt (3g)
Topping
- In addition to the caramel drip, we also sprinkled the top of the cake with chopped pecans.
Instructions
For the Cake
- Grease and flour a 12 cup bundt cake pan (You can use a tube pan also). Preheat oven to 325 degrees F
- In a separate bowl, whisk the flour, cinnamon, salt, and baking powder to combine, set aside for later.
- Cream the butter with the paddle attachment in your mixer. Gradually add the white sugar and mix for 2 minutes. Add the brown sugar and beat for an additional 2 minutes.
- Add the eggs one at a time blending after each to incorporate.
- Add vanilla extract to the l cup of milk. Add the flour mixture alternately with the milk/vanilla mixture to the butter, sugar, egg mixture. Begin and end with the dry ingredients. That will be dry ingredients added 3 times and liquid ingredients twice.
- Fold in the chopped pecans.
- Bake at 325 degrees for 55-60 minutes or until a wooden skewer inserted in the center comes out clean or with just a few crumbs attached.
- This makes approximately 8 cups of batter.
- Allow to cool in the pan for about 10 minutes before turning out onto a wire rack.
For the Caramel Sauce
- In a medium saucepan combine brown sugar, condensed milk, and light corn syrup and heat on medium heat stirring constantly to prevent burning. Try to keep the mixture off the sides of the pan. It can easily burn so watch carefully.
- Once the mixture is about to boil, reduce to low heat and simmer for 5-6 minutes. Stir often. Remove from heat and stir in butter, vanilla extract, and salt.
- After it cools a bit, pour into a a heat proof bowl. Keep in mind that it will thicken more as it cools. You can refrigerate to speed up the cooling process.
Decoration
- We applied the caramel drip using a disposable piping bag with the tip snipped away. You could also use a ziplock bag with a small bit of the corner snipped away, or simply spoon it over the cake.
- We sprinkled finely and coarsely chopped pecans over the caramel drip.
Notes
Substitution for Sweetened Condensed Milk -- INGREDIENTS: 1 can (12 oz.) of evaporated milk and 1 ½ cups (300g) sugar. Add evaporated milk and sugar to a saucepan. Stirring constantly over medium heat -- just as the mixture begins to boil, reduce heat and allow to simmer for 15 minutes. Stir frequently. Remove from heat and allow to cool and thicken.
This cake recipe makes about 8 cups of batter.
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Thanks for stopping by! We hope that you enjoy this Pecan Caramel Cake as much as we have! If you give it a try, we'd love for you to leave a comment or photo below.
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OMGosh! That looks so good! Love it! :-)
looks AWESOME!!!!
Can I use heavy whipping cream or buttermilk instead of milk? It’s all I have on hand for other cakes.
I think it would be fine to do so but I have not tried it with this recipe.
Enjoying a piece of this cake right now! This cake is delicious, moist and flavorful. Definitely will bake this again soon.
Dene, I'm so glad that you enjoyed it!! Hope you all had a great Thanksgiving!
The ingredients state we need salt for the cake but it isn’t in the recipe. Do we only need it for the topping?
Hi Jill, thanks I'll have to adjust that- you would blend in the salt with the flour, cinnamon, and baking powder mixture. (The cake and the caramel both have 1/2 teaspoon salt).
Hi, sounds so delicious! Can this cake recipe be baked in regular cake pans?
Can this be made with gluten free flour?