Kitchen

[house_cat]

I was thinking of adding pumpkin pie spice to a box of yellow cake mix to make cupcakes, but I'm not sure what the results would be or how much PP spice I should add. Has anyone ever done this?

They are going to have white frosting, and I'm also wondering if it would be better to add the PP spice to the frosting, rather than the batter.

I welcome any insight and advice.

Thank you.

[HonnyBrown]

Is this a Penzey's spice?

They recommend using it in place of cinnamon.

If you aren't adding cinnamon, try 1 teaspoon to the cake mix.

I'm clueless about the frosting.

[house_cat]

On 9/19/2014 HonnyBrown said:

Is this a Penzey's spice?

They recommend using it in place of cinnamon.

If you aren't adding cinnamon, try 1 teaspoon to the cake mix.

I'm clueless about the frosting.

I mixed a jar of it myself. It contains cin, nutmeg, cloves and allspice.

[Poodlepet2]

Hello House Cat! Are you staying cool? It has really been hot in your neck of the woods! At any rate, I am not above tasting as I go- even if it's cookie dough or cake batter. I would start with a teaspoon and blend it very well into the DRY mix: in fact, I would go with 1 1/2 tsp. Add the wet ingredients and taste. If you feel it needs to be stronger, I would adjust by 1/2 tsp increments being careful not to over mix. ....another idea is to look for a recipe for pumpkin bread, and see how much spice it uses, and use that as a starting point. I bet your house is going to smell heavenly! Hugs, Poodlepet

[ical]

If your yellow cake mix, which you are using, is simply vanilla flavored--if you add pumpkin pie spice, you will not turn your vanilla cake into tasting like a pumpkin cake (cupcakes). It will taste like vanilla with the spices which were chosen to enhance pumpkin (or squash). You probably know this anyway. If I were making it, I'd add raisons, chopped apples (if you don't have pumpkin or squash), lightly chopped walnuts, and two good tablespoons of pumpkin pie spice (if you like it truly to be tasted). Olive oil would be used instead of vegetable oil (gives a heartier flavor and is good for you).

[oceantown]

Hi, House cat,

I just posted a recipe over on recipe swap, Spiced Yogurt Poundcake. My daughter made this and it was the most delicious cake! You may want to take a look at that recipe to give you an idea of the amounts of spice to add to your cake.

Or, you may want to try that recipe sometime, I give it my highest rating!

Happy Baking!

[chickenbutt]

On 9/19/2014 house_cat said:

On 9/19/2014 HonnyBrown said:

Is this a Penzey's spice?

They recommend using it in place of cinnamon.

If you aren't adding cinnamon, try 1 teaspoon to the cake mix.

I'm clueless about the frosting.

I mixed a jar of it myself. It contains cin, nutmeg, cloves and allspice.

I don't know if this helps, but it might -

I also made my own mix for the pumpkin cake that I like to make. The recipe for the pumpkin cake uses two teaspoons of it. This is for a bundt cake, so I don't know if that is smaller or larger than a layer cake - probably smaller, so maybe one tablespoon for a layer cake size recipe?

[Mistreatedbycs]

I guess what are you trying to accomplish?

Are you trying to make your own spice cake or are you trying to make a pumpkin pie cake? There are some great recipes using a yellow box of cake mix but most of them call for a can of pumpkin too.

What you can do is make the cake mix according to directions and bake one cupcake with the spice mix added and taste it when it cools, if you don't like it, you're not wasting 23 other cupcakes. I wouldn't add the spice mix to basic vanilla frosting though, if you want to get inventive, you can mix pumpkin with cream cheese and add a 1/2 teaspoon to that combination to make a frosting.

Let us know what you decide.

[tkins]

Even though I love to bake from scratch, I also love to experiment with box mixes, so I have collected a lot of information over the years. I think this should help you with the amount of spice to add to your cake mix.

How To Make a Spice Cake from a Yellow Cake Mix
submitted by Brittany ~ The Sisters Cafe

1 yellow cake mix box
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon allspice or cloves

Combine all together and follow directions on box or in your recipe.

You should not have any problems adding spice to the frosting, if you are making it from scratch add a little spice at a time and taste as you go (oh darn), a little salt and vanilla and or almond extract would probably bring out the spice flavor or instead of adding powdered spice, use cinnamon extract. One thing I like to do to change up my frosting, instead of adding milk, I add flavored liquid coffee creamer, there should be some spice ones I know coffee mate has a Snickerdoodle and a Pumpkin Spice. It might be good with spiced cake and spiced frosting, pumpkin spice cake sometimes has spiced or cinnamon buttercream and it is pretty yummy.

By the way the liquid coffee creamer is great for making french toast, lots of fun flavors out now. My most requested cookie is made by stirring in one the single serve pouches of tasters choice coffee to the dry mix of Hersheys Chocolate Chunk cookie mix and then adding the rest of the ingredients, wonderful, but not overpowering hint of coffee.

Hope this helps. Good luck and have fun.

tkins

[house_cat]

Thank you all for the good advice. The spiced yogurt pound cake sounds wonderful. I'm up to my ears.. over my head actually, with baking tasks this weekend. I normally enjoy it but I'm a little overwhelmed. I really just wanted to give the yellow cupcakes a little "autumn" feel. The idea of using the coffee creamer in the frosting is a great one! It's about this time of year that they start putting out the pumpkin spice creamer. I'll have to try doing that.