My Pumpkin Crunch Cake is the original version that you see all over the internet. And believe me when I tell you it will be the best cake you’ve ever tasted! In fact, your family and friends will verify that statement when you serve it to them.
When I was asked to come up with a dish that was Holiday tradition in my homes, it was a no-brainer for me. One very special dessert came to mind, a dessert that usually makes one or two appearances a year, depending upon the parties I host.
But you can be guaranteed that sometime between Thanksgiving and Christmas, you’ll see this extra special cake. It’s also a cake I made for our engagement party the very first year Lisa and I were together.
Since I usually end up eating 75% of the cake by myself, it’s a good thing I don’t make it more often…sigh. Last year I did start distributing wedges of cake to the neighbors, which got me a marriage proposal in the process….luckily her husband took it in stride as did Lisa!
So when you make this cake for your family and friends, be prepared, and also have extra copies of the recipe on hand because you’re going to need them! This cake is just that good!
Holidays can be a very special time; we have been blessed as food bloggers; not only do we have enough to eat, but we have enough to make dishes to blog about……not everyone is that fortunate, and although it should be in our thoughts the entire year, this time of year it needs to be at the top of our list.
Ingredients to make the Crunch Layer
These are the ingredients in their ready form to make the crunch layer and crunch topping for the outside of the cake. Vanilla wafers and walnuts ground in a food processor. Brown sugar and melted butter.
Blend all the ingredients together to make the crunch topping. The crunch topping should be just wet enough to form it. If it’s too dry add a little more melted butter.
Add one very full cup of topping to each pan.
Ingredients to make the pumpkin crunch cake
Let’s start by gathering the ingredients we need to make Pumpkin Crunch Cake. In Chef Speak, this is called the “Mise en Place,” which translates to “Everything in its Place.”
Not only does setting up your ingredients ahead of time speed up the cooking process, it also helps ensure you have everything you need to make the dish.
**Make sure to get pumpkin puree NOT pumpkin pie mix. Eggs, butter and yogurt should be at room temperature.
How do I make the pumpkin cake batter?
There are four steps in making the cake batter.
- Whip the softened butter and sugar for about 5 minutes to get it light and fluffy. Scrape down the bowl frequently.
- Add in the pumpkin, Greek yogurt, vanilla and pumpkin pie seasoning. Mix well.
- Add the flour mixture (flour, baking soda, baking powder). Mix just enough to incorporate the flour.
- Add the eggs and mix just enough to blend.
When the cake batter is completed, split it equally among the four prepared cake pans.
**Be careful spreading the batter. You don’t want to pull up the crunch topping. Using an offset spatula makes this process much easier.
When the cake has completely cooled, you can start frosting the layers.
**Don’t rush this step, or the layers will start sliding off the cake. You can let the cakes cool overnight to be sure and make the cream cheese frosting ahead of time and let it chill. If the frosting is too hard, whip it with your mixer to soften it up enough to spread.
Repeat the process with the layers until all four have been stacked. Then put a crumb coat of cream cheese frosting on the entire cake.
**If you are better at frosting than I am, you can skip the crunch topping that covers the cake.
Coat the cake with the crunch topping by placing your hand along the side of the cake and dropping the topping along the sides. Keep turning the cake until the entire cake has been coated. Add a layer of the crunch on the top of the cake or leave the top plain, it’s up to you.
Once your incredibly delicious Pumpkin Crunch Cake is finished, it should be allowed to chill for a few hours before cutting; it will help firm up this cake. (When you do cut it, make sure to use a serrated knife). So try to be patient.
FAQ Pumpkin Crunch Cake
Yes, you can; this cake can be made up to 2 days ahead of time.
Yes, it does. The cake should be taken out of refrigeration 30 minutes before serving but kept in the refrigerator the rest of the time.
Yes, you can. Just make sure that the fresh pumpkin is not loose or liquid. The texture needs to be thick and dense.
Yes, you can. Just cut the recipe in half?
No, you don’t. You can eliminate the additional crunch topping and frosting. Just frost between the layers if you like and serve it topped with whipped cream.
More Dessert Recipes You’ll Love!
Pumpkin Crunch Cake
Ingredients
Crunch Topping
- 3 cups walnuts finely chopped or pecans
- 3 cups vanilla wafers about 75 cookies
- 3 cups brown sugar
- 8 oz unsalted butter
Pumpkin Crunch Cake
- 1 ¼ cup sugar
- 6 oz unsalted butter softened
- 16 oz can solid pack pumpkin not pumpkin pie mix
- 2 ½ cups flour
- ½ cup Greek yogurt or sour cream
- 1 Tablespoon pure vanilla
- 1 Tablespoon pumpkin pie spice
- 2 ¼ teaspoons baking powder
- ¾ teaspoon baking soda
- ½ teaspoon salt
- 4 large eggs
Cream Cheese Frosting
- 24 oz cream cheese
- 16 oz mascarpone * you can use cream cheese instead of mascarpone
- 8 oz softened butter
- 2 cups confectioners sugar
- 1 tablespoon pure vanilla
Instructions
Crunch Topping
- Melt Butter
- In a food processor, pulse cookies to a fine crumb
- Pulse walnuts to a fine chop
- Mix cookie crumbs, walnuts and brown sugar together, blending well.
- Add in Melted Butter and mix together.*if the mixture is too dry add additional melted butter
- Divide mixture into 4 prepared (greased and floured) cake pans – standard 9-inch rounds (One very full cup per pan), pressing into bottom and spreading it evenly into the cake pans. Reserve about 2 cups of the mixture which will be baked to use on the sides of the cake.I** like using a parchment cake circle in the bottom, the cake releases easily.
- Set pans aside and begin cake.
- Preheat Oven to 350 degrees.
- Bake the reserved crunch mix for 8-10 minutes at 350 degrees F. Or until it crisps up a bit. Don't let it burn!Allow to cool before adding to the sides and top of the cake.
Pumpkin Cake
- In your mixer beat sugar and butter for about 5 minutes until light and fluffy, scraping down the bowl frequently.
- Add in the pumpkin, Greek yogurt, vanilla and pumpkin pie seasoning. Mix well.
- Add the flour mixture (flour, baking soda, baking powder). Mix just enough to incorporate the flour.
- Add in the eggs, one at a time just until blended.
- Divide batter equally into your 4 prepared cake pans, smooth it out and make it as even as possible in the pan.**Be careful spreading the batter, you don't want to pull up the crunch topping. Using an offset spatula makes this process much easier.
- Bake in a 350-degree oven for about 25-30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. If you use 2 racks to bake on in the oven, at the halfway mark rotate the pans.
- Allow pans to cool about 10 minutes, then turn them out onto a wire rack and allow to completely cool.
- while your cakes are baking prepare a Cream Cheese Frosting.
Cream Cheese Frosting
- Whip the cream cheese, mascarpone, and butter till very smooth and creamy
- Slowly add in the confectioner's sugar while the mixer is on low setting
- Add in vanilla and mix well. Set aside till needed.
Assembly
- After your cake is completely cooled (you can even refrigerate for a few hours) begin frosting the layers and putting the cake together.**Don't rush this step, or the layers will start sliding off the cake. You can let the cakes cool overnight to be sure and make the cream cheese frosting ahead of time and let it chill. If the frosting is too hard, whip it with your mixer to soften it up enough to spread.
- When you have assembled all the layers with some frosting between them, start to spread the remaining frosting on the sides and top.
- Coat the cake with the crunch topping by placing your hand along the side of the cake and dropping the topping along the sides. Keep turning the cake until the entire cake has been coated. Add a layer of the crunch on the top of the cake or leave the top plain, it's up to you.
Video
Notes
After heating place a plate on top of the pan, and invert quickly. Tap the pan with the heel of a knife to help release the cake.
Rena Diego
Chef Dennis,
I’ve never baked with walnuts before because I love pecans. I made your cake with pecans and it was a hit, but I found that walnuts are cheaper…does the walnuts become candy flavored with your recipe like pecans do? I’m skeptical about using walnuts thinking it will have that slight after taste…pls let me know what your thoughts are on the difference of the nuts with baking.
Thanks!
Rena
Chef Dennis Littley
hi Rena
I’ve used both nuts as well, but mostly walnuts and have never noticed any aftertaste. I think the brown sugar caramelizes and the bitterness becomes sweeter and more acceptable as a contributing flavor.
Dennis
Ann
More delicious that I could have hoped for! Thank you for the recipe! It is scrumptious! I didn’t have vanilla wafers so I used Gingerbread boy cookies. The crumbles got a little over done but it added a nice crunchy brittle-like flavor. The cake is even better the second day. It slid around a bit at first so I used skewers to secure it. I will make this again. It was a big hit! Thank you again.
Chef Dennis Littley
thanks for letting me know Ann, I do have the same problem with the sliding part when I try to frost it too soon, I usually let the frosting chill first and it stays together easier. I do love that cake!
Ann
Ok, thank you for the tip! I will do that! I am so hungry for this cake again, I am going to make it for Christmas! Even my kids agree its a do over! Love it! Thank you for the winning recipe!
Sydney
Hi Chef Dennis! Well, I saw this cake a year ago and have been following all the questions/comments since. Funny to see how the questions die down marking the end of the holiday season and how they start revving up again in the new year. Well, this year I finally had the chance to give this cake a go myself! And I’m quite proud of myself. I’ll really find out how I did tomorrow (Thanksgiving) but I made a mini tester cake (a good chef always taste tests, right? ;). The cake was so moist with just the right balance of pumpkin. I’ll see how the frosting holds up. I don’t like strong cream cheese frosting so I only used 8oz. of cream cheese, the marscapone and butter. This made it come out a little too buttery so I tried to cut the butter flavor w an extra cup of confectioners sugar. But I think next time, I would double the marscapone. The baked crumbs came out a little dark bc I really wanted them to be crunchy. I don’t mind that, but they were pretty greasy so I guess I’d only use 2 sticks of butter next time. Thanks and Happy Thanksgiving!
Rena Diego
Sydney: my crust/crumb came out dark too but it’s not the butter it’s the amount of cookies and sugar . You may not have put enough vanilla wafers. If you measure the cookie crumbs after you crumb it, it comes out to far more than 75 cookies…more like a whole bag full needed. I had to redo my first batch because it was too dark and buttery. Also whisk the crust ingredients it makes it perfect. In regards to your icing…make sure the butter and cheese is a little colder than room temp when you whip …when it’s too warm it will butter up not whip. Thought I’d share my trial and errors. Happy thanksgiving!
Sydney
Rena,
Thanks so much for all the great advice! I wrote your notes down on the recipe for when I plan on making it again. 🙂 You’re probably right about the cookies, because I didn’t actually have enough in the first place and knew it, but went with it anyway. I had only bought 1 tub of vanilla wafers from Trader Joe’s and counted them. It only came out to about 50 cookies (after eating a few, lol) so next time I’ll buy 2 tubs. Thanks also for the frosting tips. I love baking but homemade frosting is my downfall. I just haven’t gotten it down yet – and the butter temperature probably has a lot to do with it, so good advice!
Well, thanks again and enjoy the holidays!
Sydney
Rena Diego
Sydney: you’re welcome! When u decrese the sugar in the crust to 1.5 packed cups increase your crumbs and nuts by .5 cups each…I did an extra 1 cup pecans to my crust becuz I didn’t have enough wafers and it was delicious! But nuts are more expensive than wafers so next time I’d increase dry ingredients up to 1 cup (either 1 cup wafers or 1 cup nuts or .5 of each). If you are having trouble with the icing you can also make it without the butter and do 4 times this recipe: 8 oz cream cheese. 1/3 cup powder sugar and 1/2 tsp vanilla. I use this icing for my fruit pizza.
You can also use the box of Nilla Wafers from the grocery store. This is a costly cake to make.
Rena Diego
Sydney: in the icing recipe you can increase the powder sugar if you’d like it more sweet (with the recipe i posted). Also, I recommend unsalted butter in all your baking recipe…if you google it tells you ” unsalted butter should always be used in baking. The reason for this is that salt toughens the glutens in flour.” I have always used unsalted butter, expensive, but perfects dishes…when i use salted butter it always tends to melt down and not whip up…on that note, make sure you are using the right mixing head…to be on the safe side use the flat beater and not the wire whip when mixing butter.
Sydney
Rena, thanks again. I will make note of the sugar/cookie/nut ratio, but will probably use more wafers than nuts ($ like you said). I chose TJ’s vanilla wafers because they still seem to use wholesome ingredients (i.e no partially hydrogenated oil) compared to the old-fashioned box of vanilla wafers that I have always loved, but feel too guilty buying now. I even went as far as making my own once for a trifle just to avoid the processed ones, lol. Thanks for the unsalted butter tip. I think I had read something about that, but honestly just use whatever I happen to have. I just looked at the box and it turns out I did end up using unsalted butter for the frosting, a fortunate accident. The frosting wasn’t too bad, I suppose, and people loved the cake (one person said it was better than a restaurant 🙂 and I’m blown away by how moist it is (!) but I just personally found my frosting a bit too buttery/cream cheesy.
Well, thank you and Chef Dennis again. I doubt too many recipes get this kind of dialogue going, it’s really interesting. Thank you, Chef Dennis for this learning forum! Happy Holidays!
Rena Diego
I made this cake and it was a hit! I did a few things differently:
Crust:
1.) blend the cookies to crumbs and then measure to 3 cups and put in a bowl.
2.) put pecans bits in blender and just pressed the pulse button twice for a second and poured in bowl with cookies.
3.) only put 2 packed cups of brown sugar into crust mix..next time I’d cut it to 1.5. 3 cups didn’t work and 2 was still sweet – almost perfect, but sweet.
4.) Melt 8 oz unsalted butter for 1 min 30 sec and add.
Mix all together with a whisk and press 1 cup (not packed) on bottom of ea pan. Put remaining crust in greased 13×9 pan and bake for 15 mins tossing every 5 mins.
Cake recipe was perfect!
Cream cheese frosting was perfect with 3 8oz cream cheese…sift the powder sugar to avoid clumps.
Carly
Can this be made a night before
Chef Dennis Littley
yes it can Carly
Ken Topham
I am so proud of this cake as this is my 2nd time to make it! My first one the crunch was dark which I must have used dark brown sugar instead of light. This one is picture perfect just like the photo here. I took it to the office to keep for our Thanksgiving dinner tonight and everyone is oohing and ahhing and just freaking out over it. I keep taking the lid off the cake carrier and waving the lid as the intoxicating smell of the crunch with it’s butter, brown sugar and vanilla wafers draws everyone by it’s essence. It is such a huge cake that I know we will have some left and I have promised the office people I will return with some for them. Chef Dennis – You are a genius! I love this recipe! Thank you!
Chef Dennis Littley
Thanks so much for letting me know how well the cake went over Ken, Happy Thanksgiving!
Carly
What type of cookies? Like a nilla cookie?
Chef Dennis Littley
yes Carly, Nilla wafers
Rena Diego
I love food, esp sweets and love making people happy with food too! I’m going to try this recipe for my family’s thanksgiving gatherings and hope I’m successful! I hope that it turns out as beautiful as this cake looks! I’m determined…and can’t wait to try it! Thank you for a creative recipe and a beautiful dish! I’m not a chef but hope to one day have my own business where I could do what I love everyday…bake! I’ll rate it once I’m done making it…tomorrow!
Cindy
Hi
this looks amazing!
I have 2 questions
1. recipe says 8 oz butter for topping – in above comments I see 6oz and 12oz referenced – could you clarify which it is?
2. can i make the layers ahead a freeze for 4 days later? and can i make the filling ahead a refrig for the same?
Thank you so much.
Chef Dennis Littley
hi Cindy
sorry it took so long to answer, I must have missed this earlier. The cake freezes very nicely so it can be done ahead of time, and the filling will hold up very well in the refrigerator for at least a week, although you may need to get it out to warm up, or re whip it before spreading.
and it is 8 oz butter for the topping.
Dennis
Cindy
I made this ahead of time and froze it – put it together the day I served it – It was amazing and got rave reviews – thank you!!!!!
Betty
This cake is awesome!! I never try out new recipes on guests, but I did last night when I served this cake at a dinner party. Everybody loved it! My husband actually ate a total of three slices before the night was over and he is not usually much of a cake-eater! This cake is definitely going to be the one I serve for all special occasions from now on. The only thing I will change is to make just one half of the crunch topping since the full amount made a lot more than I needed. Even so, I put the extra crumbs in the freezer (before baking) and will use them for a cookie crumb pie shell!
Chef Dennis Littley
Thanks for letting me know Betty, it is my favorite all time cake!
Sherry
I made your pumpkin cake in September…LOVED IT! For some reason, your name didn’t click when I visited your website for the cake till I went to make your rustic bread! I love the bread and make it all the time. I guess because I printed it out and didn’t actually visit the website till now (lost the bread recipe to spilled milk), did I realize you were one and the same! Thank you for 2 of my favorite recipes and look forward to many more I am sure.
Chef Dennis Littley
Thanks Sherry! I happy to hear that you’ve had success with my recipes! Hope you find a few more to enjoy!
Lucille
I made this cake last year and it has been requested again. I was thinking of making into cupcakes…but am not that experienced of a baker. Do you have any advice on the cake to cupcake conversion? I imagine it might not have to cook as long…will everything else work as is listed in the recipe?
Thanks for your help and an awesome recipe.
Chef Dennis Littley
hi Lucille and I’m happy to hear you enjoyed my cake. I had a freind recently make the cake into cupcakes and I believe she add the crunch to the top layer of the cupcake . You could also add more after frosting as well to dress it up a bit. I would cook them about the same time you do you other cupcakes
Let me know how they turn out
Mary
This cake looks heavenly, however a member of my family is highly allergic to nuts. Might you have a substitute for the walnuts for the crunchy topping?
Also, any ideas of how to adjust this recipe for high-altitude baking (5000 ft)?
Chef Dennis Littley
hi Mary
I’m sorry to say that I don’t have any experience in high altitude baking, but I would think if you treated it like any of the other recipes you’ve made it should turn out. As for the Walnuts, I racked my brain trying to think of another crunchy item you could replace it with and the only thing I could think of might be granola, although I have no idea how it would work or taste. Possibly some type of seed might work too, but I’ve only made this recipe with walnuts or pecans so I can’t offer any workable solution.
Mary
Thanks so much! I’ll try the granola and let you know how it works!
Mary
Adrienne
Mary – my granddaughter is also allergic to nuts, so I left out the walnuts as well. The cake tasted great with just the vanilla wafers in the “crunch” topping. I have since learned to use graham crackers as an alternative. Store-bought vanilla wafers no longer have “real” vanilla in them. Time to read labels, again. There are some good recipes for homemade vanilla wafers, too.
Michelle Day
I baked this afternoon and can’t wait to try at Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow. Am wondering, however, if cake should be store in fridge overnight? Or will this dry it out. Thanks!
Chef Dennis Littley
I would store in the fridge. Just take it out about a half an hour to let it warm up before serving.
Lisa Smith
Going to try to make this gluten free! Looks wonderful! I’m sure it will pass the test!! : )
Chef Dennis Littley
hi Lisa
I look forward to hearing how it turns out Gluten Free
thanks
Dennis
Annamaria @ Bakewell Junction
Chef Dennis,
I came looking for your Tiramisu recipe and wound up pinning this one. Gorgeous!
Great tip about releasing the cake from the pan too.
Annamaria