Spiced Apple Cake with Salted Caramel Buttercream

Jump to Recipe

This spiced apple cake with salted caramel buttercream embodies one of fall’s most beloved flavor, the caramel apple. It is also stuns with impressionistic tree art made entirely of candy melts. Get ready to wow your family and friends at gatherings this fall with both the taste and look of a cake that is not to be missed!

I used to bake cakes every single week. Years ago, my first home bakery was named Arrow Cakes, and I built a thriving little at home bakery to help meet the cake needs of my community. I loved baking cakes, but as life evolved, so did my business. I gravitated toward food photography and expanded my baked goods to include more varieties. It made sense to close the doors of my bakery and simply release my beloved recipes online for anyone to make for themselves! I have a gamut of glorious cake and buttercream recipes waiting to either hit the site or go to print one day, but slowly I want to begin sharing my favorites. This spiced apple cake with salted caramel buttercream is easily in the top five of my favorite cake recipes, and this particular design is also a showstopper! I will show you how to make these simple yet stunning impressionistic fall trees using only a handful of candy melts + piping bags.

What you’ll need to make this spied apple cake with salted caramel buttercream:

Salted butter

Granulated sugar

Dark brown sugar (light or golden would work too)

Large eggs

Ground cinnamon

Ground nutmeg

Ground cloves

Salt

Baking powder

Whole wheat flour

All purpose flour

Whole or 2% milk

Apples (your favorite will work! I chose honey-crisp)

Powdered sugar

Pure vanilla extract

Salted caramel

Candy melts, I used the red, salted caramel, green, and light cocoa colors

Reusable or disposable piping bags, 12” or 16” will do

The Cake

This robust cake batter boasts notes of cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves, plus the tart softness of apple pieces baked right in. I used a combination of whole wheat and all purpose flour to give this cake some heartiness, and balance out the sweetness of the buttercream. If you are making this gluten free, you can absolutely omit the use of whole wheat and use all gluten free 1:1 baking flour.

The Buttercream

Now if you’ve been around these parts for a while, you know my love of caramel runs deep. This glorious salted caramel is simple my 3-ingredient homemade caramel sauce with the addition of ¼ teaspoon salt. That’s it. You can follow the detailed instructions over on that post for how to easily make your own caramel sauce (all it takes is ten minutes plus some cooling time!). If you do prefer to use store bought, I recommend Trader Joe’s caramel sauce because it is made with minimal ingredients and tastes pretty close to the homemade variety.

The Candy Melt Decor

This is the fun part! These impressionistic fall trees require absolutely no artistic skill whatsoever. If you can scribble like a five year old, you can make these trees. 😉 I chose four colors of Wilton candy melts, and melted each in microwave safe bowls according to the instructions on the packaging. Once the colors were melted, I poured each into a 12” piping bag, and snipped off a small section of the end. The width you snip off will be the thickness you “draw” with. Start little, you can always cut more of the piping bag off, but you cannot uncut it! Starting with the brown, draw the tree stumps and any branches that you’d like. Add layers of color, circular “leaves,” or anything else that suits your fancy. Have fun with this and don’t overthink it. Your cake will look wonderful no matter how many colors you have (you could literally do a candy melt “forest” of brown tree branches and it would look super cute), or how your designs turn out.

Once you are finished piping the trees, allow the candy melt art to harden completely. I piped my trees onto parchment lined cookie sheets and popped them into the freezer for five minutes, which was more than enough time for them to cool and harden.

When you are ready to decorate the cake, ensure that you use small wooden dowels or toothpicks on the larger or heavier trees. This will keep them from topping over (and demolishing your forest 😆). Place your trees on the top and sides of the cake, or simply on the top, or simply on the sides. Whatever you want to do will look great!

I garnished the cake with a few small pumpkin truffles from Trader Joe’s as well. You can also find them on amazon here. These are of course optional, but I love that they added a little special something to this fall cake.

Dietary Substitutions

I love providing gluten and dairy free substitutions so that those with alternate dietary needs can enjoy my recipes to their fullest! These are subs that I have either use and continue to stock in my own home, or that have come highly recommended from others. I want your baking experience to be the best it can be, and avoiding gluten or dairy shouldn’t hinder that process in the slightest. 

As always, here is a list of tried and true dietary substitutes, so that you can enjoy this recipe without the additions of gluten or dairy: 

Bob’s Red Mill 1:1 Gluten Free Baking Flour is a wonderful all-purpose sub, and it’s cup for cup, so use the same measurements as you would all-purpose flour.

Miyokos Butter is a plant based brick that closely resembles dairy butter not only in its look, but it’s taste as well. It melts, browns, and spreads just like real butter, and truly is a fantastic substitute in this recipe. Use it as a 1:1 ratio sub, same as the flour, so the recipe measurements will not change.

Cupful of Kale makes a vegan salted caramel sauce that would work in this frosting as well.

I’d love to see your fall cakes, so tag me in any that you make! #HHBBAKES

Happy cake baking (and decorating)!

XO,

Heather

OTHER CAKE RECIPES

• 
  Yellow Cake with Milk Chocolate Frosting
• 
  Oreo Crust Cookies and Cream Cake
• 
  Toasted S'mores Layer Cake
• 
  Peanut Butter Layer Cake