Pecan Cake

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Who says Thanksgiving has to be all pie? Enter this bourbon caramel pecan cake: all the gooey, nutty flavor of a classic pecan pie transformed into a tender, buttery cake. This showstopping dessert is layered with toasted pecans and finished with a sticky glaze that seeps into the cake for maximum richness and moisture.

Pressing toasted pecans on top of the cake batter before baking ensures they stay crunchy for a satisfying texture and gives the cake a built-in wow factor. You’ll finish by brushing a generous slosh of bourbon caramel over the still-warm cake, letting it drip down the sides and soak into the crumb, ensuring every bite is rich with flavor and wonderfully moist.

Tips for the best pecan cake:

• Toast your nuts. Sorry, no, you can’t skip this step. Toasting the pecans enhances their flavor, aroma, and texture. Because the pecan halves will be glazed, toasting them gives them a crisper texture, creating a more dynamic crispy-gooey topping.
• Use room-temperature ingredients. Baking with room-temperature ingredients ensures they incorporate smoothly without lumps. For the butter, you should be able to push a finger into it and meet some resistance. To quickly warm the eggs, place them in a bowl of warm water.
• Overmix? Never worry. This cake uses the reverse creaming method: beating the butter into the dry ingredients, which coats the flour mixture with fat and inhibits gluten formation. This means you don’t get the aeration that usually comes from traditional creaming (beating butter and sugar until creamy). As a result, when adding the wet ingredients, you’ll whip the cake mix for about 2 minutes—a step that can feel like you’re doing something wrong. Trust the process
• Prep your pan. We love Pam Baking Spray—it’s not the same thing as cooking spray. The former is a solution of oil and flour that forms a more stable coating and almost guarantees zero stickage.
• Pan swap. If you don’t have a springform pan, you can bake this cake recipe in a tall (at least 3") round 9" cake pan. Line the pan with parchment and add 2 strips of parchment paper in a cross pattern to help lift the cake out of the pan.