High Altitude Brown Butter Pumpkin Cake

Every fall, I make a pumpkin spice layer cake, and this is the recipe that never fails me. This is a high altitude pumpkin cake recipe made with brown butter, cozy fall spices, and sweet and tangy cream cheese vanilla bean buttercream. Sometimes, I make this pumpkin cake in the form of my Thanksgiving Pumpkin Cake. And it’s also beautiful with naked cake layers, filled with swirls of frosting. This is a perfect fall cake for Halloween and Thanksgiving!

Looking for more high altitude pumpkin recipes? You’ll love pumpkin sugar cookies with maple icing, best pumpkin bread, pumpkin bourbon ice cream, and pumpkin pie with brown sugar streusel.

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Why You’ll Love This Cake

A Perfect Texture. The cake is so soft, so moist, tender and fluffy, with a velvety crumb. With the cream cheese buttercream, it’s one of the best things I’ve ever eaten. My dad even once told me when I brought this cake to their house for Thanksgiving, that it was the best cake he’d ever had in his life!

Brown Butter. I absolutely love using brown butter (or browned butter) in baking. It’s fantastic in these Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies (my personal favorite of all the cookies). And this one layer Brown Butter Toffee Cake is to die for. It’s an ingredient I use quite often, and it makes everything so much more delicious!

Pumpkin Everything Season. You have to have a festive pumpkin cake for pumpkin everything season, right? And this cake is equally perfect for a casual Halloween party or an elegant Thanksgiving dinner.

High Altitude Tested. I develop all the recipes on my site for Denver’s altitude of 5,280 feet. If you’re at a lower or higher elevation, please see my FAQs for guidance on adjusting recipes for your altitude.

See the recipe card at the end of the post for the full ingredients list and instructions.

Ingredients

• Brown Butter. Besides flavor, the brown butter adds moisture and richness to the cake.
• Pumpkin. You’ll need plain canned pumpkin, not pumpkin pie filling. I’ve also made this cake using my own homemade pumpkin puree, which I made after roasting a few pie pumpkins. It turned out great! Expect the color to be more yellow than orange if you use homemade pumpkin puree.
• Sugar. I’ve tested this cake recipe with dark brown sugar, light brown sugar, and a combination of both brown sugar and granulated sugar. Honestly, it works out well every time! I’ve written the recipe below to use both, but know that you can use just brown sugar with great results.
• Eggs. The eggs add structure and richness to the cake.
• Buttermilk. I love baking with buttermilk, and I use it in everything from waffles to muffins to cakes. It adds moisture, flavor and acidity, which helps with the rise of the cake.
• Vanilla. For a double dose of vanilla, there’s vanilla extract in the cake, and vanilla bean in the buttercream.
• Flour. Most of the time, I use all-purpose flour in my high altitude pumpkin cake. I have used cake flour on occasion, and it makes the cake a little lighter, but it’s great either way.
• Baking Soda. The baking soda reacts with the acid in the buttermilk and pumpkin to leaven the cake.
• Salt + Spices. So, you’ll never see “pumpkin pie spice” listed as an ingredient in my pumpkin recipes. If you have it, though, use it! But I like to add my spices separately. Salt, cinnamon, ginger, cloves and nutmeg give this cake amazing flavor that perfectly complements the pumpkin.

Instructions

Make the browned butter.

• Making brown butter is as easy as just melting butter on the stove. After melting the butter in a small saucepan over medium heat, continue to cook the butter, not stirring, but just swirling the pan occasionally. This process will let some of the water evaporate while browning the milk solids on the bottom of the pan. It’s very fragrant with a nutty, toasted aroma, and a richer flavor than melted or clarified butter.
• Throughout the process, which might take 5-10 minutes or so, the butter will go through several stages. It will splatter and hiss a bit as the water evaporates. Then it will quiet down, and a layer of foam will form on top of the melted butter. At this point, you’ll know it’s nearly ready. If you swirl the pan to see the bottom, you’ll see golden brown solids that have formed at the bottom of the pan. Remove from the heat, and immediately use a spatula or spoon to scrape the solids from the bottom of the pan so they don’t stick. Some people strain out the solids, but I use all of it. It has the most incredible flavor. The brown butter is now ready to be used in my brown butter pumpkin cake.

Make the cake batter.

• Preheat the oven to 350, and spray the bottoms of three 8-inch cake pans with non-stick spray.
• In a large bowl, whisk together the pumpkin, brown sugar, granulated sugar, eggs, buttermilk and vanilla. Whisk in the browned butter.

• In a separate bowl, sift together the flour, baking soda, salt and spices.

• Add the dry ingredients to the wet, and whisk for about 15-30 seconds until smooth.

Bake the cake.

• Divide the batter between the pans. Bake the cakes on the center oven rack for about 22-25 minutes, until a cake tester or toothpick comes out clean.
• Set the pans on a wire cooling rack, cover loosely with a clean kitchen towel, and cool completely before frosting.

To make cream cheese frosting for a layer cake, you need to use half butter and half cream cheese, for a cream cheese buttercream. Cream cheese is very soft, and the frosting has a tendency to become very soft, thin and runny when the wrong proportions of ingredients are used. But when combined with butter (and of course, powdered sugar), it becomes more stable and firm, and is perfectly suited for frosting a layer cake without fear of it sliding off.

Make the cream cheese buttercream.

• In the bowl of your stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, beat the cream cheese and butter for one minute.
• With the mixer on low, add the powdered sugar, meringue powder, salt and vanilla bean paste. Increase speed to medium, and whip for 3-4 minutes, scraping the bowl occasionally, until light and fluffy.

• Remove the cooled cakes from the pans. Fill, frost and stack the cakes, then frost all over with a thin crumb coat of buttercream. Chill in the fridge for 30 minutes, then finish frosting all over with a final coat of buttercream.
• For my final coat of buttercream, I kept it pretty thin and transparent, for a “semi naked” look on my cake. This looks especially pretty with the piped buttercream pumpkins.

Decorating Your Pumpkin Spice Cake

• Piped Buttercream Pumpkins. Okay, let’s talk about how I decorated this cake! It’s so easy to pipe the pumpkins on the side of the cake using Wilton Tip 1M and a little leftover buttercream. This is my favorite piping tip, because it does so many different things from ruffles to swirls to rosettes to pumpkins! I have 3-4 of these tips, because I use them so often.
• Curly Vines. Then I switched to a small round tip (#2) to pipe the curly vines and the stems. I think those vines really make the design. I thought about tinting the buttercream orange for the pumpkins, but in the end, I loved the look of the all white, and I’m glad I didn’t use food coloring.
• Candy Leaves. Lastly, I finished the buttercream pumpkin design with little candy leaves, but you could use a leaf piping tip to pipe some leaves, too. I hope you add this high altitude pumpkin cake to your baking lineup this fall, and if you do, please tag me on Instagram, so I can see your creation!

Paint the leaves.

• I found these cute green holly leaves in a Christmas sprinkle mix, and I just love them. But green isn’t what I’m going for on this cake, and I wanted a more monochromatic look.
• To paint the leaves, simply mix a few drops of vodka with some bronze shimmer powder or luster dust to make a thin, edible “paint”. Then just use a small brush to brush the mixture onto the candy leaves. The vodka dries quickly, so that the candy won’t melt from the moisture.
• Let the leaves dry for about an hour, before decorating the cake.

Pipe the pumpkins and leaves with buttercream.

• Fit a piping bag with tip 1M, and fill with buttercream. Pipe a vertical row of buttercream to form the center of the pumpkin, followed by a row on each side of the middle one.
• Pipe two more pumpkins so you have three in a row.

• Switch to a small round tip, such as tip #2, and pipe some curly vines around the pumpkins and the stems.
• Decorate with the leaves.

Be sure to read all of my BAKING FAQs where I discuss ingredients, substitutions and common questions with cake making, so that you can be successful in your own baking! I also suggest reading these comprehensive posts on making Perfect American Buttercream, How to Stack, Fill, Crumb Coat and Frost Layer Cakes and How to Use Piping Bags.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I make this recipe if I don’t live at high altitude?

You sure can, but you’ll probably need to make a few adjustments, such as decreasing the flour, and increasing the leavening. This article by King Arthur Baking has good guidelines on making specific adjustments for various altitudes.

What piping tip did you use to pipe the pumpkins?

I used tip 1M to pipe the pumpkins, and #2 to pipe the vines.

Can I use pumpkin pie spice in this cake?

Yes, you can substitute pumpkin pie spice for the blend of spices. I would use 1 tablespoon pumpkin pie spice to replace the blend of spices in my ingredient list.

Does homemade pumpkin puree work in this recipe?

Sure, but make sure you’re using sweet sugar or pie pumpkins, not field pumpkins, which don’t have a good flavor for baking.

Can I use pumpkin pie filling?

No, pumpkin pie filling is not interchangeable with plain canned pumpkin puree. The pie filling contains other ingredients that would ruin the cake.

Does this cake need to be refrigerated?

Cakes with cream cheese frosting usually need to be stored in an airtight container in the refrigerator. But since cake is best served at room temperature, you should let it sit out for 3-4 hours to warm up before serving.

How long does this cake stay fresh?

It will stay moist and soft for about 3 days.

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