The Perfect Christmas Cake
If you could take all the festive, wintery elements of the holiday season and bake them into a cake, you’d end up with this gingerbread layer cake. With its warm, spiced gingerbread cake layers, luscious brown sugar frosting, and sparkling sugared cranberry garnish, this is a stunning holiday dessert! This cake is a fun and pretty twist on classic gingerbread. And yes, it’s a true gingerbread cake; we’re using both molasses and gingerbread spices in the batter. It pairs beautifully with a brown sugar version of my cream cheese frosting–yum. This is an easy recipe made with a nod to the reverse creaming method, similar to the method I used for my yellow cake. You don’t even need a mixer for the batter! You’ll get three layers that are perfect for stacking (these are slightly less fluffy/more dense than my gingerbread cupcakes to keep them from falling apart on your fork). Scroll down to take a peek at the inside!
What You Need
Let’s go over a few key ingredients you’ll need to make this gingerbread layer cake:
Molasses. You cannot have gingerbread cake without molasses–it’s as essential as ginger! Use unsulphered molasses and DO NOT use blackstrap molasses.Spices. Including ginger (of course!), nutmeg, allspice, cinnamon, and cloves. Cloves and molasses are what really set the gingerbread flavor apart from pumpkin spice and give this cake a more wintry, true-gingerbread flavor than my spice cake or carrot cake.Sour cream. Sour cream is our secret weapon for ultimate moisture, tenderness, and flavor. It creates the perfect soft cake crumb. And no, you won’t be able to actually taste the sour cream in the final product! Full-fat, plain greek yogurt would also work here.Sugar. I recommend using light brown sugar in both the cake and the frosting. Dark brown would be overpowering and a tad too rich.Cream cheese. Use full-fat, brick-style cream cheese in your frosting. Do not use the low-fat or spreadable kind!
SAM’S TIP: A bit of hot water helps to bloom the spices and develop the flavor, and it also lightens the crumb of this gingerbread cake. This is very similar to blooming cocoa powder! Remember, this is just an overview of the ingredients I used and why. For the full recipe please scroll down to the bottom of the post!
How to Make Gingerbread Cake
SAM’S TIP: Sugared cranberries are a fun, colorful addition for decorating the top of the this gingerbread layer cake. They may look complicated, but they’re actually very easy to make–check out my sugared cranberries post for a how-to video! I know Christmas baking is still a few weeks away, but I just couldn’t resist sharing this one a bit early 😊 Enjoy! Let’s bake together! I’ll be walking you through all the steps in my written recipe and video below! If you try this recipe, be sure to tag me on Instagram, and you can also find me on YouTube and Facebook I originally shared this gingerbread cake recipe in 2015 but it was giving some readers some issues. As of November 2022 I’ve updated the recipe to be as foolproof as possible and have modified the frosting from a bourbon frosting to a brown sugar cream cheese one, which I think suits the recipe better.
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