Gingerbread Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting
This wholesome gingerbread cake recipe is topped with cinnamon-dusted cream cheese frosting. It’s the perfect holiday treat!
Updated by Kathryne Taylor on August 29, 2024
This is my kind of cake. The inside is naturally sweetened with honey and molasses, and spiced with my favorite warming spices. No mixer required!
Then I slathered the top with pillowy clouds of cream cheese frosting, because why not? It’s the holiday season. Let’s deck the halls. Bring on the cream cheese frosting. Sprinkle cinnamon on top.
I’ve received several requests for gingerbread cake over the years, and this one delivers. It’s more of a wholesome, hearty cake than a delicate bakery cake, but the frosting balances it all out.
I used my partner Frontier Co-op’s spices, which always smell and taste so fresh. Their Vietnamese cinnamon is sweet like snickerdoodles, rather than fiery like Red Hots.
Frontier Co-op gets their cinnamon from Northern Vietnam, where a community of farmers harvest cinnamon cut from the case of the tree to ensure a high concentration of oil (and flavor).
Combined with ground ginger, cloves and nutmeg, this cake is the perfect holiday treat. As always, please let me know how you like it in the comments!
Gingerbread Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting
This wholesome gingerbread cake is topped with rich cream cheese frosting. It’s the perfect holiday treat. Recipe yields 9 slices of cake.
Ingredients
Cake
- 1 ⅔ cups white whole wheat flour or regular whole wheat flour
- 1 ½ teaspoons baking powder
- 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 1 teaspoon ground ginger
- ½ teaspoon fine salt
- ¼ teaspoon ground cloves
- ¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg
- ¼ teaspoon baking soda
- 1 large egg
- ⅓ cup honey
- ⅓ cup molasses*
- ½ cup milk of choice
- 6 tablespoons (¾ stick) unsalted butter, melted
Cream cheese frosting
- 8 ounces cream cheese, softened to room temperature
- 2 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened to room temperature
- 1 ¼ cups powdered sugar
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Lightly grease a 9-inch square pan.
- In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, cinnamon, ginger, salt, cloves, nutmeg and baking soda.
- In a medium bowl, whisk the egg until lightly beaten. Add the honey and molasses and whisk until combined, then whisk in the milk and melted butter.
- Pour the wet mixture into the dry mixture and mix just until combined. Pour the batter into your prepared pan and bake for about 21 to 25 minutes, until the cake is golden brown and a toothpick inserted into the middle comes out clean.
- Place the cake on a cooling rack and let it cool completely. Wait to make the frosting until the cake has completely cooled.
- To prepare the frosting: In a medium mixing bowl or the bowl of a stand mixer, combine the softened cream cheese and butter. Using a hand mixer or a stand mixer (or your own strength), beat the cream cheese and butter together until fluffy. Add the powdered sugar and vanilla and stir with a spoon until it is incorporated (or else powdered sugar will fly everywhere), then whip the frosting until it’s nice and fluffy.
- Spread frosting evenly over the top of the cake. If desired, sift additional cinnamon on top. Then, slice it and serve. This cake is best stored in the refrigerator for up to 4 days.
Notes
*Molasses note: The strength of your molasses will determine how intensely flavored your cake is. I used regular (not blackstrap) molasses.
Make it gluten free: Based on similar cakes, I think you can substitute all-purpose gluten-free flour for the wheat flour.
Make cupcakes/muffins: I think you could make 1 dozen muffins out of this batter. Bake at 400 degrees Fahrenheit for around 14 to 18 minutes.
Nutrition
The information shown is an estimate provided by an online nutrition calculator. It should not be considered a substitute for a professional nutritionist’s advice. See our full nutrition disclosure here.
This post was created in partnership with Frontier Co-op and I received compensation for my participation. Opinions are my own, always. Thank you for supporting the sponsors who support C+K!
I see this with apple baked in…
This is SO outstanding!!! OMG…I’m in heaven.
I’m not even sure how I stumbled on this recipe. But I had half of an 8 ounce brick of cream cheese to use up so I made this and cut the frosting recipe in half. Good thing because I’d have eaten just the FROSTING it’s so good!
This is worth more than 5 stars!
I’m glad you loved it, Winnie! I appreciate your review.
I made just the cake (no frosting) with all ingredients as written. I used unsweetened almond milk as my milk choice. It was fabulous!
Hey Kate!
The cake was wonderful! my daughters loved it so much they finished all the cake! hope to see you in church on Sunday and after that we can go chat about the recipe over some coffee.
Love, Jen Ruthberg
New favorite cake recipe! It is moist and fluffy without being a fussy recipe. I really tried not to over mix the batter and it helped keep the texture perfect. I used the date cream cheese frosting instead. Thanks for another hit Kate
Just made this for my baby’s first birthday and it is so yummy! He has an egg allergy so I used 1/4 cup of unsweetened applesauce in place of the egg and it worked great (I’ve done the same with your pumpkin muffins and pumpkin bread – it always seems to work well).
Love, Love your recipes, just one little huge problem. Please look into the research on the gut problems caused by WHOLE WHEAT. This delightful dessert worked great with good quality white flour I order from Canada.
Ginger cake with icing sounds delicious
Hello Kate!
This recipe seems to be great! Could you please re-upload the quantity of ingredients in grams?
Thanks,
Shubhra
Hi, Sorry to disappoint, Shubhra. I don’t provide metric conversions.
Yummy! The cake was not dense or dry, and I know my oven seems to run a bit hotter so I always start with less time than the recipe suggests. I baked for 19 minutes.
Used regular molasses, whole wheat flour.
The 250 gram brick of cream cheese I buy here in Canada turns out to weigh just over 9oz. I used it all, and now I see that my frosting is less thick then pictured I am sure I could have added more icing sugar, but was not bothered by it.
Hello,
I didn’t see the recipe until I had already made a gingerbread cake with my usual recipe – will try next time. I did use the icing recipe and it’s delish!!! (light and fluffy). I have some icing left do you think it would be a problem to freeze it? There isn’t much left, but have already probably way too much icing on the cake, if that’s possible. But maybe save it for cinnamon rolls, or whatever. Rating is for just the icing, cake next time.
Hi, if I want to use all purpose flour instead of whole wheat, would it be a 1:1 substitution?
That should work. Let me know what you think!
Hi Kate, when you double the recipe,what size of a pan would you use or do you have to use two 9 inch pans. And how long would you bake it for. Thanks Kate
Hi! You can use a 9×13 or use two pans.
While this was super tasty flavour wise, mine came out so dry :(, not too sure what went wrong. I did bake it for 25 minutes, so maybe next time I cook only for 20.
I’m sorry to hear that! It could have been baked too long. If you didn’t spoon and level the flour, it could have been too much to make it more dense.
Hi, thanks for this lovely recipe. My question would be how many ml is the cup you use for measurement?
I don’t provide metric conversions, sorry!