Welcome to the final day of Pumpkin Week! For Day 5, I made a Pumpkin Caramel Cream Cheese Cake! This is once again inspired by my love of combining different Fall flavors. The pumpkin, caramel, and cream cheese all compliment each other and play a supporting part in making this cake delightfully delicious! This cake is also quite easy to make, so give it a try this Fall!
Ingredients:
- Pumpkin Spice Sponge (3 layers, you can find my recipe here)
- Vanilla Buttercream (find my recipe here)
- Cream Cheese Frosting (find my recipe here)
- Caramel, room temperature (find my recipe here)
- Pumpkin Cake Pops (find my post on how to make them here)
- Stabilized Whipped Cream
- Fall Sprinkles
Step 1: Make the Cake
Prepare the Pumpkin Spice Cake as described in my post. For this cake, I prefer to add a little less of the pumpkin pie spices. Instead of using 2 ½ teaspoons, I used 1 ½ teaspoons so that the pumpkin stands out a little more. Once the sponge layers are cooled, level them so that they have flat tops. Set aside the trimmed sponge to make cake pops.
Step 2: Fill, Layer, And Frost the Cake
Add about a tablespoon of buttercream to the center of the cake board and then place the first layer of sponge on the cake board (the buttercream will act as a glue to ensure that the cake does not slide off the cake board). Add some vanilla buttercream to a plastic bag fitted with a Wilton 2A piping tip. Pipe a ring of buttercream around the perimeter of the sponge. Add a small amount of cream cheese frosting onto the center of the sponge and use an offset spatula to smooth the buttercream into a thin layer. Then, add some caramel on top of the cream cheese buttercream and spread it into a thin layer. Lastly, add a little more cream cheese frosting and spread it into a thin layer on the caramel.
Add the next layer of sponge and then repeat the process until the cake is fully stacked. Spread a thin layer of cream cheese buttercream and use a straight-edge kitchen tool, such as a bench scraper, to make the buttercream very smooth. Place in the refrigerator for at least an hour in order to make sure that the buttercream is very cold when you do the caramel drip in Step 3.
Step 3: Caramel Drip
Add the room temperature caramel to a plastic squeeze bottle (preferred), a piping bag, or simply use a spoon. Note: If the caramel is still too thick at room temperature, place in the microwave for 5-10 seconds to warm it so that it will flow smoothly down the side of the cake. Slowly add the caramel right along the edge of the top of the cake and allow it to drip down the side of the cake. After making drips down the side of the cake, add a layer of caramel to completely cover the top of the cake. Put the cake in the refrigerator to let the caramel set before moving on to Step 4.
Step 4: Finishing Touches
Add a few pumpkin cake pops to the top of the cake. Next, pipe some stabilized whipped cream in tall dollops using a piping bag fitted with a Wilton 1M piping tip. Add pumpkin shaped sprinkles to the top of the whipped cream dollops and then add leaf sprinkles to the rest of the dollops. Your Pumpkin Caramel Cream Cheese Cake is ready to enjoy!
Thank you so much for checking out this post! I hope that you enjoyed it and that you loved Pumpkin Week! Please leave a comment below regarding if you tried it, or what other cakes I should try to make!
