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Easy Gingerbread Cake Recipe {with icing sugar glaze}

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Make your holidays extra festive with this easy Gingerbread Cake Recipe! There’s loads of warming flavours like cinnamon, clove, nutmeg and rich molasses.  The whole cake is topped with a simple icing sugar glaze and plenty of fun sprinkles!

A gingerbread bundt cake with an icing sugar glaze and sprinkles.

Easy Gingerbread Cake Recipe

Now that my American friends have had their Thanksgiving and we are on the last week of November, bring on all the holiday inspired goodies, like this gingerbread cake recipe!

You guys, I can’t tell you how excited I am to be sharing this one!  I want to thank my fam jam, though, because over the past few weeks they’ve enjoyed their fair share of this cake while I was recipe testing.

Cake for you…and you…and YOU!!! Cake for EVERYONE!!!!

The things we do, am I right?

All the testing was worth it, though, because this gingerbread bundt cake is really good. As my sister in law said – it has all the warming flavours of the holidays, but totally suitable for year ’round eatin’.  I wonder…is she trying to tell me something, lol.

This gingerbread is not too sweet and literally takes minutes to whip up.  It’s made with some simple ingredients that you probably have on hand.  The hardest part? Waiting for this baby to cool.

Ingredients for a gingerbread cake recipe.

How to Make Gingerbread Cake – Easy Step by Step Instructions

  • Mix together dry ingredients and lay to one side
  • Place butter, cream cheese and brown sugar in the bowl of a stand mixer (or use a bowl with a hand mixer)
  • Blend until smooth and creamy
  • Add molasses and vanilla extract and blend
  • Next goes eggs (one at a time)
  • Mix in dry ingredients
  • Pour batter into prepared (aka greased) pan and bake
  • Icing sugar glaze and sprinkles go over cooled cake
  • Enjoy!

Photo collage on how to make a gingerbread cake.

Photo collage on how to make a gingerbread cake.

Icing Sugar Glaze

For this gingerbread cake recipe, I kept the icing simple. The acronym I regularly use (and you may have heard me say it before) is K.I.S.S. (keep it simple stupid).  The cake itself is, like I said, not overly sweet so this icing sugar glaze adds some sweetness and a pretty factor (along with those sprinkles, of course).   The glaze is literally two ingredients.  I used icing sugar and orange juice.  While recipe testing I tried with various quantities of icing sugar and my results were…

  • 1/2 cup of icing sugar (just enough to drizzle some lines of icing sugar along the top of the cake)
  • 1 cup of icing sugar (enough to drizzle over top but not quite enough for my likin’)
  • 1.5 cups (what I was happy with)

To make this easy icing sugar glaze, start with 1.5 cups of icing sugar and add 2 tablespoons of orange juice. Stir, stir, stir.  Slowly add additional orange juice, if needed (1 tsp at a time), to get your desired consistency.  I used 2 tablespoons plus 2 teaspoons.  A little bit of juice goes a long way and you don’t want the glaze too thin.  It should be thick, almost like honey level thickness.

A spoonful of icing sugar glaze.

Tips for Making this Gingerbread Bundt Cake

  • Make sure your butter, cream cheese and eggs are at room temperature before making this gingerbread cake.  The ingredients blend better and you get the most oooomph out of them.
  • When measuring the molasses, grease a measuring cup with baking spray before pouring in the molasses.  It helps it to come out more easily.
  • Once the batter is poured into the greased bundt pan, tap it down on a hard surface a bunch of times to remove any excess air bubbles before baking.
  • Ensure that the gingerbread cake is fully cooled before icing.  Otherwise, the icing sugar glaze will just melt (aka soak) right into the cake and it won’t ‘pop’.
  • I mixed the icing sugar glaze in a measuring cup (to make things easier).  Just pour and let the icing sugar glaze flow naturally over the cake.
  • As soon as the icing sugar glaze is over the cake, decorate with sprinkles. Because this is a holiday cake, sprinkles are definitely recommended.

Overhead shot of a Christmas cake drizzled with icing sugar glaze and sprinkles.

Other Easy Holiday Baking Recipes you May Enjoy

A piece of holiday spiced cake on a plate with the full cake behind it.

If you want to be extra indulgent, serve a big hunk of this gingerbread cake with some vanilla ice-cream and an eggnog latte….after all, it is the holidays 😉

Hope you love this gingerbread bundt cake as much as I do!

Until next time, take care and chit chat again soon:)

~Dawn

P.S. If you think this gingerbread cake recipe will make your belly happy too, please be sure to hit that little Pin button.  Many thanks, you guys! XO

A gingerbread cake with an icing sugar glaze and sprinkles on a plate.
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5 from 20 votes

Easy Gingerbread Cake Recipe

Make your holidays extra festive with this easy Gingerbread  Cake Recipe! There's loads of warming flavours like cinnamon, clove, nutmeg and rich molasses.  The whole cake is topped with a simple icing sugar glaze and plenty of fun sprinkles!
Course Dessert
Cuisine American, Canadian
Keyword Christmas cake, gingerbread bundt cake, gingerbread cake, homemade gingerbread
Prep Time 10 minutes
Cook Time 40 minutes
Cooling 1 hour 30 minutes
Total Time 2 hours 20 minutes
Servings 1 bundt cake
Author Dawn Coombs

Ingredients

  • 2 cups all purpose flour
  • 2 tsp baking powder
  • 1/2 tsp baking soda
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 1 tbsp ground ginger
  • 1 tsp cinnamon
  • 1/2 tsp ground clove
  • 1/2 tsp nutmeg
  • 250 g package light cream cheese -softened to room temperature
  • 1 cup unsalted butter
  • 1/2 cup brown sugar -packed
  • 1/2 cup fancy molasses
  • 1.5 tsp vanilla extract
  • 4 eggs -I used 'large'
  • baking spray -to grease bundt pan

Glaze

  • 1.5 cup icing sugar
  • 2 tbsp plus 2 tsp orange juice

Gingerbread Bundt Cake

    Instructions

    • In a bowl combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, ginger, cinnamon, clove and  nutmeg. Stir to combine and lay to one side. Preheat oven to 325 F.
    • In a stand mixer (or using a bowl with a hand mixer) blend cream cheese, butter and sugar until combined and smooth, about 2-3 minutes.
    • Add molasses and vanilla extract and mix another 1 - 2 minutes.  Add eggs, one at a time, blending about 15-30 seconds with each egg addition. 
    • Add reserved flour mixture to stand mixer and blend until just combined.
    • Generously grease bundt pan (I used a standard 10 inch bundt pan) and pour batter in.  Bake at for 40-45 minutes or until wooden skewer comes out clean.  Let cool in pan for 30 minutes.  Remove from pan and let cool completely on wire rack before icing.

    Glaze

    • In a small bowl add icing sugar.  Add 2 tablespoons of orange juice and stir.  Then, a teaspoon at a time, add more juice and mix until smooth and creamy.  Drizzle over COOLED gingerbread.  

    Video

    Notes

    • Make sure your butter, cream cheese and eggs are at room temperature before making this gingerbread cake.  The ingredients blend better and you get the most oooomph out of them.
    • When measuring the molasses, grease a measuring cup with baking spray before pouring in the molasses.  It helps it to come out more easily.
    • Once the batter is poured into the greased bundt pan, tap it down on a hard surface a bunch of times to remove any excess air bubbles before baking.
    • Ensure that the gingerbread cake is fully cooled before icing.  Otherwise, the icing sugar glaze will just melt (aka soak) right into the cake and it won't 'pop'.
    • I mixed the icing sugar glaze in a measuring cup (to make things easier).  Just pour and let the icing sugar glaze flow naturally over the cake.
    • As soon as the icing sugar glaze is over the cake, decorate with sprinkles. Because this is a holiday cake, sprinkles are definitely recommended.
    Tried this recipe? That's awesome!Mention @dawn.girlheartfood or tag #girlheartfood!

    A photo collage of gingerbread cake with title text.

    © Girl Heart Food.  All images and content are COPYRIGHT PROTECTED. Please do not use any images without prior permission.  Please do not republish this recipe.  If you want to reference this recipe, link directly back to this post. Thank you.

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    Reader Interactions

    Comments

    3. Miriam

      November 29, 2018 at 7:03 am

      Love the thought of this cake baking in the oven – the kitchen must smell heavenly with all those beautiful warming flavours. Slightly obsessed with eggnog so I have to check out your eggnog latte recipe as well. What a great combination that would be!

      Reply

    4. Denise from Urbnspice

      November 29, 2018 at 1:57 am


      As soon as I saw cream cheese together with the butter in your Gingerbread Cake ingredients, I knew that this cake would be a winner, Dawn. I am excited to make it over the holidays, but I agree with your sister-in-law. Make it all year around! Thanks so much for testing until perfect for our benefit. 🙂

      Reply

    5. Colleen

      November 28, 2018 at 11:46 pm


      Gingerbread cake is a holiday tradition in our family. I have never made it with cream cheese, though, and it sounds amazing! Pinning to try. Thanks for sharing, Dawn!

      Reply

    6. Charity

      November 28, 2018 at 11:33 pm


      I was craving gingerbread cake land then your cake popped up in my feed! So excited to make this. I’m craving all the holiday sweets!

      Reply

    8. Marissa

      November 28, 2018 at 9:11 pm


      I love gingerbread cake and yours sounds amazing! Love that fun drizzle with festive sprinkles! We love to cut up leftover cake into cubes to serve over vanilla ice cream like ‘crouton’. 😉 This one’s a must try!

      Reply

    9. Ben|Havocinthekitchen

      November 27, 2018 at 8:55 pm

      Christmas season isn’t really festive without having gingerbread (in any form!) at least once…but better six or eight times 🙂 I also noticed many people don’t like/use molasses, but this is the ingredient which makes just a ginger flavour the gingerbread; it’s so warming, hearty, and somehow nostalgic. Pass me a slice please, Dawn!

      Reply

    10. SHASHI AT SAVORYSPIN

      November 27, 2018 at 1:39 pm


      Wow, Dawn, what a fantastic gingerbread cake recipe! I haven’t made a lot of gingerbread cakes in my time but I find myself agreeing with your sister in law – this is definitely worthy of year round eating! I’m so loving the cream cheese in the cake – I am torn between making this or cookies or David’s fudge for Christmas gifts… mini bundts of this would be so lovely to gift – and to eat! 🙂

      Reply

    19. Laura

      November 26, 2018 at 2:27 pm


      Dawn – I am all about Gingerbread this time of year! I love this bundt cake, it looks and sounds so flavorful and tender. Perfect for the holidays! Obviously, Pinning!

      Reply

    20. Milena

      November 26, 2018 at 11:47 am


      My poor waistline! if you keep dishing up awesomeness like this I will have to spend the entire January skiing:)
      Love the idea of a gingerbread cake – I’ve never really made one before. And it looks perfectly festive, so no excuses:)

      Reply

    22. David @ Spiced

      November 26, 2018 at 9:30 am


      Oh, gingerbread is one of my favorite things about the holidays! And I love cake…so gingerbread cake is right up there near the top of Santa’s list! I’m down with your sister’s comment about this one being year-round eats, too. I have no shame. I’ll eat gingerbread cake in June. 🙂 But since it’s the appropriate time of year right now, I’m all in! Did you happen to save me a slice??

      Reply

    23. Leanne | Crumb Top Baking

      November 26, 2018 at 9:20 am


      I love all the warming flavours of gingerbread. It’s one of my favourite treats this time of year. I love that you kept this cake simple. Aren’t bundt cakes great like that!? And the icing sugar glaze with sprinkles is so pretty. I usually make an icing sugar glaze with icing sugar and almond milk. I bet the orange juice adds a nice flavour and compliments the gingerbread beautifully! Hope your week is off to a great start Dawn!

      Reply

    24. Sarah

      November 25, 2018 at 7:55 pm


      Ooooo this made me super hungry!!! That cake looks perfectly baked… and YES it would be so good with an eggnog latte! Love love!

      Reply

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