It’s time to celebrate the Day of the Dead with this easy spiced chocolate cake with goat cheese buttercream. Layers of moist chocolate cake spiced with pumpkin pie spice and instant coffee filled with gooey store-bought pumpkin pie spice caramel.
If you’re not a great cake decorator, worry not. Let sprinkles and a fun marshmallow sugar skull topper do the heavy lifting for you. All you’ll need to do is spread on a thin layer of luscious vanilla goat cheese (or cream cheese) frosting and then pat on a boatload of sprinkles! You may also want to take a look at my adult Halloween chocolate cake recipe.
For ease of browsing, here are all of my cake recipes in one place.
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How to Decorate an Easy Day of the Dead Cake
In a word: sprinkles!
Not everyone owns a ton of cake decorating equipment, and not everyone can ice a cake so it is super smooth.
But almost anyone can slap a thin coat of icing on a cake and then cover the entire thing in sprinkles that reflect the theme of your cake!
These days, you can get sprinkles for almost any theme, including Day of the Dead.
Here’s the rundown:
Equipment You Need to Make the Cake
- 3 6″ cake rounds, or 2 larger rounds. It’s your choice. No need to buy special pans, from scratch or from a box. (Note, I do love my 6″ cake pans, though!)
- filling and frosting, either homemade or store bought
- All The Sprinkles!
- A topper of some sort.
What Kind of Frosting Should I Use?
I got inspired by my friend’s goat cheese frosting from his wonderful cookbook, All-Time Favorite Sheet Cakes & Slab Pies, so I changed my plan to use cream cheese frosting and made goat cheese frosting instead.
You can absolutely make cream cheese frosting or any other white frosting. Ermine frosting would be a great choice as well.
I do think you should stick with white or light-colored frosting because a white background will blend in nicely with the sprinkles if you accidentally leave any gaps.
What If I Don’t Have 3 Cake Pans?
Worry not. I only have 2 as well.
Here’s what you do:
- Pour 1/3 of the batter into each of your two pans, leaving the last third of the batter in the bowl.
- Refrigerate the leftover batter.
- Bake the two cakes, let cool for 10 minutes, and then turn them out to finish cooling.
- You can reuse the parchment paper that you used in the first round of baking, so peel it off one of your layers and put it back in the bottom of one of the cake pans. No need to wash it as long as the cake came out mostly cleanly.
- Pour the remaining third of the batter into this pan and bake.
The batter keeps fine for a few hours and your third layer will rise just as well as your other layers.
Jenni Says: If you don’t want to futz about with 3 layers, just bake 2 8″ or 9″ cake layers.
Layering and Decorating the Cake, Step by Step
- Pipe a ring of frosting on the first layer.
- Fill in the ring with your filling. (NOTE: If you’re not using a separate filling, you can just spread the frosting on without worrying about piping the ring.
- Add a second cake round and pipe a ring of frosting on it.
- Add more filling.
- Top with the 3rd and final layer and press down gently.
- Apply a very thin crumb coat of frosting to the outside of your cake and then chill for 30 minutes.
- Add another thin coat of frosting. (Remember, you’re using a ton of sprinkles, so you don’t need a thick layer of frosting)
- Press sprinkles all over the top and sides of your cake, covering the frosting as completely as you can. Use your hand to gently press the sprinkles into the frosting so there are no loose ones. This will minimize any mess when cutting and serving the cake. Refrigerate until ready to serve.
- Add the topper right before presenting and serving.
How to Make the Pumpkin Spice Caramel Filling
It was very easy to make the filling for this chocolate Day of the Dead cake.
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I took 1/2 cup of my frosting and mixed it with about 1/3 cup of Litehouse Foods Pumpkin Spice Caramel Dip.
That’s it! See?
- 1/2 cup of frosting in a bowl.
- Pumpkin Spice Caramel Dip (and that stuff is Excellent on its own!)
- Plop some into the frosting.
- Whisk until completely combined and smooth.
So, Tell Me About This Chocolate Cake
What, this guy? Yeah, I think you can see why I love this cake so much.
The base recipe I used is Hershey’s Perfectly Chocolate Chocolate Cake. It’s an easy recipe to make since it doesn’t require you to do The Creaming Method.
I love using this recipe as my base for most of my chocolate cakes because it is easy to make and is super moist and flavorful.
It’s a two bowl cake. You can make it with a
All you do to make the cake is combine all the dry ingredients–including sugar–in one bowl. Then combine all the wet ingredients in another bowl. Mix the two together for two minutes on medium speed, and then finish with a cup of boiling water. Easy!
For this spiced chocolate cake, I knew I wanted to use the pumpkin spice caramel as a filling, so I used pumpkin spice to flavor the cake along with some instant coffee. So somewhere inside this cake lurks a pumpkin spice latte!
Let’s Make This Spiced Chocolate Cake!
Questions?
If you have any questions about this post or recipe, I am happy to help.
Simply leave a comment here and I will get back to you soon. I also invite you to ask question in my Facebook group, Fearless Kitchen Fun.
If your question is more pressing, please feel free to email me. I should be back in touch ASAP, as long as I’m not asleep.
A Note About Measurements
I generally try to stick to weights when baking, for both accuracy and consistency. But the perfectly chocolate chocolate cake always comes out, well, perfectly, and it’s written in cups, so that’s what I’m sticking with for this recipe.
For most of my other recipes, I do use a scale, and this is the one I use and recommend:
Don't let its small price and small size fool you. The Escali Primo is an accurate and easy-to-use food scale that I have used for years. It's easy to store, easy to use, has a tare function, and easily switches between grams and ounces/pounds for accurate measurements.
Love This Spiced Chocolate Cake? Please Rate and Review. Thanks!
It will help me and other readers so much if you take a moment to rate and leave a review for this recipe.
You can use the stars to rate 1-5 (5 is best), and leave a review in the comments. It helps me make adjustments if any are needed, and comments help others decide whether the recipe is worth making.
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Thank you so much for taking the time!
Spiced Chocolate Cake Recipe (Day of the Dead Theme)
Video
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Equipment
Ingredients
For the Cake
- 2 cups sugar I used Dixie Crystals
- 1-3/4 cups all-purpose flour
- ¾ cup American cocoa powder not Dutch process
- 2 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice
- 2 teaspoons instant coffee or espresso powder
- 1-1/2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1-1/2 teaspoons baking soda
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 2 large eggs
- 1 cup milk I used whole milk
- ½ cup vegetable oil I used avocado oil
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract I used Adams Extract
- 1 cup boiling water
For the Frosting
- 4 oz goat cheese or cream cheese
- 2 oz 1/2 stick unsalted butter
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract I used Adams Extract
- 1 pound 4 cups powdered sugar (I used Dixie Crystals)
- 2 ½ Tablespoons half and half
For the Filling
- ½ cup prepared frosting
- ⅓ cup pumpkin spice caramel dip I used Litehouse Foods
To Decorate
- All the sprinkles and a topper that fits the theme
Instructions
For the Cake
- Preheat oven to 350F with a rack in the center.
- Prepare 3 6" pans by spraying with pan spray, lining with a parchment circle, and then spraying again. Set aside.
- Combine the sugar, flour, cocoa powder, pumpkin pie spice, espresso powder, baking powder, baking soda and salt in the bowl of your stand mixer or in a large bowl.
- Whisk to thoroughly combine and aerate the dry ingredients.
- Whisk together the eggs, milk, oil, and vanilla.
- Pour into the dry ingredients and mix on medium speed for two minutes, scraping the bowl as necessary.
- Mix in the boiling water until completely combined. The batter will be thin.
- Divide batter evenly among the three pans and bake until done, about 30 minutes. Internal temperature should be 195-200F, and the cake will just start pulling away from the sides of the pan.
- Remove to a rack to cool for 10 minutes, and then turn out to cool completely.
- For maximum moist cake awesomeness, wrap each layer in plastic wrap while still hot and put in the fridge to cool. This keeps all the liquid in the cake rather than it evaporating while the layers cool.
- Fill and frost, then chill at least an hour before decorating.
For the Frosting
- Beat goat cheese or cream cheese, butter, and salt until smooth and creamy.
- Add the sugar and mix on low speed until mostly combined and then on medium speed. Scrape the bowl as necessary.
- Thin to spreading consistency with half and half. You may need to use a bit more or less than called for, depending on conditions in your kitchen. Start with 1 Tablespoon and then go from there.
- Mix on high speed until fluffy.
For the Filling
- Whisk the frosting and caramel dip together until smooth and completely combined.
To Decorate
- Put all your sprinkles in a bowl. Use a rimmed sheet pan to catch the sprinkles that fall off the cake.
- Hold the cake from the bottom in your non-dominant hand. This will be easier with the cake chilled. You can also place the cake on a 6" cake circle, slicking it down with a bit of frosting, for more stability.
- Grab a handful of sprinkles, tilt the cake, and press the sprinkles up the sides of the cake, allowing excess to fall into the baking sheet.
- Continue all the way around the cake, filling in areas as necessary, and tilting the cake to get the best coverage.
- Press sprinkles evenly on top of the cake.
- Chill the cake again for at least 30 minutes.
- Top with a marshmallow sugar skull topper or the topper of your choice.
Did You Make Any Changes?
Notes
WHAT IF I DON’T HAVE 3 CAKE PANS?
Worry not. I only have 2 as well. Here’s what you do:- Pour 1/3 of the batter into each of your two pans, leaving the last third of the batter in the bowl.
- Refrigerate the leftover batter.
- Bake the two cakes, let cool for 10 minutes, and then turn them out to finish cooling.
- You can reuse the parchment paper that you used in the first round of baking, so peel it off one of your layers and put it back in the bottom of one of the cake pans. No need to wash it as long as the cake came out mostly cleanly.
- Pour the remaining third of the batter into this pan and bake.
LAYERING AND DECORATING THE CAKE, STEP BY STEP
- Pipe a ring of frosting on the first layer.
- Fill in the ring with your filling. (NOTE: If you’re not using a separate filling, you can just spread the frosting on without worrying about piping the ring.
- Add a second cake round and pipe a ring of frosting on it.
- Add more filling.
- Top with the 3rd and final layer and press down gently.
- Apply a very thin crumb coat of frosting to the outside of your cake and then chill for 30 minutes.
- Add another thin coat of frosting. (Remember, you’re using a ton of sprinkles, so you don’t need a thick layer of frosting)
- Press sprinkles all over the top and sides of your cake, covering the frosting as completely as you can. Use your hand to gently press the sprinkles into the frosting so there are no loose ones. This will minimize any mess when cutting and serving the cake. Refrigerate until ready to serve.
Nutrition
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Loving the use of goat cheese in the frosting!
What a fun cake!! And goat cheese frosting?! OMG – mind blown! Gotta try that!
Mark Scarborough inspired me with posting his carrot and parsnip sheet cake with goat cheese frosting. I couldn’t help myself, and I’m glad I didn’t. It is delicious!!