This recipe features all the flavors of the holiday season wrapped up into one beautiful bundt cake! This cake is packed with pumpkin, apples, cranberries, and pecans, flavored with cinnamon and ginger, and topped with a maple icing. It might sound like a lot (it is!), but all the flavors work wonderfully together.
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What sets this recipe apart
ALL the holiday flavors: This cake is packed with tons of seasonal flavors: pumpkin, apples, cranberries, pecans, warm spices, and maple all in one dessert.
Great for a crowd: This recipe makes a big cake that is perfect for sharing with holiday guests.
Ease: Assembling, decorating, and serving this cake are easy.
Visual recipe overview
*Full recipe below in recipe card*
Cake batter
Using a hand mixer or stand mixer, prepare the pumpkin cake batter and str in the apples, cranberries, and pecans.
Bake
Pour the batter into a greased 12-cup bundt pan and bake for 50-60 minutes.
Maple icing
Whisk powdered sugar, milk, and maple extract. Drizzle over the cooled cake. Garnish with pecans, if desired.
My recipe testing tips and notes
This recipe was inspired by the holiday bundt cake in Dorie Greenspan’s Baking cookbook (affiliate link). I made several tweaks to the recipe, using my popular pumpkin bundt cake as the base.
Be sure to use a 12-cup bundt pan, not a 10-cup. This is a large cake.
This is a very moist cake and it stays moist for days!
This is a great cake to make ahead. You can bake it up to one full day in advance (hold off on the icing, see below).
Over time the maple icing will thin out from the moisture in the cake. I recommend waiting until the day you are serving it to add the icing.
Prefer these flavors separately? Try my cranberry cake, apple cake, or pumpkin bundt cake.
Bundt pan: how to prevent sticking
Use a good quality nonstick bundt pan. This is the pan (affiliate link) I used for this recipe.
Wait to grease the pan until right before you add the batter.
Use a non-stick baking spray with flour in it. I use Pam baking spray with flour.
Let the cake cool down before removing it from the pan. The cake will firm up and be more stable than if you invert it right out of the oven.
BAKE SMARTER, NOT HARDER
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Recipe
All-in-One Holiday Bundt Cake
Ingredients
Cake:
- 2⅔ cups (334g) all purpose flour, spooned and leveled or weighed
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- 2½ teaspoons ground cinnamon
- 1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
- 2 teaspoons ground ginger
- ½ teaspoon kosher salt
- ½ cup (113g) unsalted butter, softened to room temperature
- ½ cup (118ml) canola or vegetable oil
- 1¼ cups (250g) granulated sugar
- ½ cup (110g) light brown sugar, packed
- 3 large eggs, room temperature
- 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
- 15 oz can pumpkin puree , not pie filling
- 1 heaping cup (150g) peeled diced apple
- 1 heaping cup (105g) fresh cranberries
- ⅔ cup (70g) chopped pecans
Icing:
- 1½ cups (180g) powdered sugar
- 3 tablespoons milk
- ¼ teaspoon maple extract
- 2 tablespoons chopped pecans, optional garnish
Instructions
Cake:
- Preheat oven to 350°F with a rack in the center of the oven. This recipe requires 12-cup bundt pan (no smaller). Set it aside but don't grease it just yet.
- In a large bowl, combine flour, baking soda, baking powder, spices, and salt. Set aside.
- In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment (or a large bowl with a hand mixer), beat butter, oil, granulated sugar, and brown sugar until combined. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating until combined. Add the pumpkin puree and vanilla, beating until combined and scraping the sides and bottom of the bowl as needed. Add the flour mixture and beat until no streaks of flour remain. Stir in the chopped apples, cranberries, and pecans with a rubber spatula or spoon.
- Thoroughly grease a 12-cup bundt pan (I use nonstick baking spray with flour in it). Pour the batter into the pan and spread it into an even layer. Bake for 50-60 minutes, until a long toothpick inserted into the cake comes out clean (check a few different spots since you might hit a piece of fruit). Place the pan on a wire rack to cool for 15 minutes, then carefully remove the cake from the pan and place the cake directly on the wire rack to cool completely.
Icing:
- Whisk powdered sugar, milk, and maple extract. Adjust the consistency by adding more powdered sugar to thicken or more milk to thin. I like the icing just thin enough to drizzle but still on the thicker side. Add the frosting to a piping bag with the edge snipped off (I did not use a tip). Beginning on the interior of the bundt, squeeze the frosting while bringing the bag up the cake and over the side, then back up again (in a back and forth-zigzag type of pattern). Immediately top with pecans.
Notes
Nutrition
Nutritional Information is an estimate based on third-party calculations and may vary based on products used and serving sizes.
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