Pumpkin Spice Walnut Cake
Pumpkin Spice Walnut Cake. An old fashioned, beautifully spiced, moist delicious pumpkin bread recipe transformed into a delicious bundt cake with vanilla bean cream cheese glaze.
Originally published Oct 19, 2026.
Can a bread be a cake? Sometimes yes!
What's in a name anyway? So often, loaf cakes get labelled as breads.
Is it just because they are baked in pans intended for yeast raised breads? I guess so, but the bread label being applied to loaf cakes has always confounded me.
Banana bread zucchini bread, and yes pumpkin breads are all actually cakes. It's what got me thinking about this recipe.
Pumpkin Spice Walnut Cake. Inspired by my mom's recipe.
We've all long loved my moms well spiced Pumpkin Bread in our family. It's been baked a thousand times or more, I'm sure.
It always rises well, has great spiced flavour and retains it's moisture from the pumpkin puree in the recipe as well as being an oil based cake.
I set out to make it again, when someone asked for a suggestion for a glaze or frosting for it. I had recently sampled another spice cake with cream cheese frosting and that got me thinking too.
I had also just purchased a big bag if walnuts from Costco in preparation for Holiday baking season, so uses for those were weighing on my mind too. It's a 2 kg bag, so if you have walnut recipe ideas, please send them along!
All of these seemingly random thoughts congealed into this one recipe idea. Since I mention in the pumpkin bread recipe that the entire recipe for two loaves can be baked in a bundt pan, it was a good time to demonstrate that idea in photos as well.
The cream cheese glaze is inspired by one that I always do fr my Chocolate Zucchini Cake. This time , with fresh vanilla beans in hand, I decided that was just the topper for this beautiful fall inspired cake!
With Canadian Thanksgiving just gone by and American Thanksgiving in only a few weeks, this would make a terrific cake for either if those occasions too!
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Pumpkin Spice Walnut Cake
Pumpkin Spice Walnut Cake. An old fashioned, beautifully spiced, moist delicious pumpkin bread recipe transformed into a delicious bundt cake with vanilla bean cream cheese glaze.
Ingredients
For the cake batter
- 2 cups all purpose flour
- ½ teaspoon salt
- 3 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 2 teaspoon allspice
- ½ teaspoon ground cloves
- 2 teaspoon baking powder
- 2 teaspoon baking soda
- 1½ cups sugar
- 4 eggs
- 1¼ cups vegetable oil
- 2¼ cups pumpkin puree, fresh or canned, (or canned pumpkin pie filling)
- ¾ cup raisins (optional)
- 1 cup whole walnut halves, toasted and roughly chopped (optional)
For the vanilla glaze
- 4 ounces cream cheese, (½ cup)
- 2 cups powdered sugar, icing sugar
- Seeds of one small vanilla pod or 2 teaspoon vanilla extract
- A little milk, start with a coupe of teaspoons and add a few drops at a time if needed.
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Instructions
To prepare the cake.
PLEASE NOTE that procedure photos for this recipe appear above in the body of the post and below in the notes for easy reference.
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
- Grease a 9.5 inch , 10 cup bundt pan well and lightly flour.
- Toast the walnuts on a cookie sheet or baking pan for 8-10 minutes, tossing them half way through.
- Set aside to cool while the batter is prepared.
- Sift together the flour, salt, cinnamon, allspice, cloves, baking powder and baking powder. Set aside.
- Whisk together the sugar, eggs, oil and pumpkin puree.
- Fold in the dry ingredients until the flour is all incorporated in the batter. If using raisins and walnuts, fold them in when the flour is almost incorporated.
- Bake for 45-50 minutes at 350 degrees F or until a wooden toothpick inserted in the centre comes out clean.
- Cool on a wire rack. When completely cool spoon the cream cheese glaze ver the top.
To prepare the vanilla glaze.
- Beat all ingredients together until smooth.
- If you think the glaze is too thick, add a teaspoon or two of milk. If it gets too thin, add a little more icing sugar.
- Spoon over the cooled bundt cake and let it fall naturally down the sides, coaxing it a little with the spoon as necessary.
- Store in a covered container in the fridge.
Notes
Nutrition Information
Yield
16Serving Size
1Amount Per Serving Calories 572Total Fat 31gSaturated Fat 4gUnsaturated Fat 27gCholesterol 54mgSodium 339mgCarbohydrates 69gFiber 4gSugar 39gProtein 8g
The nutritional information provided is automatically calculated by third party software and is meant as a guideline only. Exact accuracy is not guaranteed. For recipes where all ingredients may not be used entirely, such as those with coatings on meats, or with sauces or dressings for example, calorie & nutritional values per serving will likely be somewhat lower than indicated.
Rock Recipes a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites. Our product recommendations are almost exclusively for those we currently use or have used in the past.
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