This soft, moist applesauce cake is packed with wholesome ingredients and a delicious classic apple flavor your whole family will love.
The best applesauce cake
If you’ve been on a search for the best homemade applesauce cake recipe around, this one will not let you down!
Light and fluffy, with just 9 ingredients (yes, really), it is everything you could ever hope for in a healthy Fall dessert.
The cake is easy to make and kid friendly, with no eggs or dairy required. It can even be oil free. This is a really great way to use up extra applesauce.
Also try this popular Crustless Pumpkin Pie
“Absolutely wonderful! Moist, flavorful, and leftovers are going to be great for breakfast without feeling unhealthy. With just a little powdered sugar and sliced strawberries on top. Next time I might add some crushed walnuts to the batter.”
-Mina
*Featured comment*
Healthy applesauce cake from scratch
The first time I ever tried an applesauce cake was one November night back in high school, at a friend’s sleepover birthday party.
Trying to be healthier, she had substituted the oil in a boxed spice cake mix with applesauce.
Not normally a fan of low fat cakes or baked goods, I remember being so impressed with how moist and tender the cake was even without added fat.
Over the years, I’ve come up with my own old fashioned applesauce cake that does not rely on a box. Cake from scratch always tastes better.
It envelops the entire kitchen in a sweet cinnamon aroma as you are baking and makes you want to cozy up next to a warm fireplace, fork in hand.
How to make the recipe
Step one: Start by gathering the ingredients and greasing an 8-inch baking pan or lining it with parchment paper.
Step two: Preheat your oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. In a large bowl, whisk all liquid ingredients, then stir in remaining ingredients to form a batter.
Step three: Smooth the batter into the prepared baking pan. Place it on the oven’s center rack to cook for 18 minutes or until perfectly fluffy. Let cool.
Step four: Frost as desired, and serve. If you can wait, the cake is even sweeter and better textured a day after it’s made.
I recommend refrigerating leftovers for freshness, and they should be good for about 3-4 days. Or slice and freeze for up to a month.
Apple cake frosting options
The apple spice cake can be dusted with powdered sugar or iced with a basic glaze or with melted coconut butter.
You can also top it with Coconut Whipped Cream, store bought vanilla frosting, dairy free ice cream, or the homemade cream cheese frosting recipe below:
Simply whip together 8 oz packaged or homemade cream cheese or Vegan Cream Cheese with 4 oz butter or vegan butter, 2 cups powdered sugar (unrefined if desired), and 1 tsp pure vanilla extract.
Applesauce snack cake ingredients
For the applesauce: Either sweetened or natural unsweetened applesauce works. And if you wish to use homemade applesauce, that works too!
For the flour: I’ve successfully made the recipe with spelt flour (for a whole grain option), regular all purpose flour, or oat flour for a gluten free cake. In general, I am not a fan of baked goods with whole wheat flour, so sub that at your own risk.
If you prefer a flourless cake, try either this Keto Birthday Cake or my Almond Flour Banana Bread.
For the sweetener: I used unrefined coconut sugar for the cake in the photos. However, regular white or brown sugar or unrefined cane sugar also work. Granulated erythritol or xylitol are likely fine to use as well, although I haven’t tried them here.
Step by step recipe video
Above, watch the video showing how to make an applesauce cake.
The recipe was adapted from this Vegan Cake and from my Apple Bread.
Applesauce Cake
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup applesauce
- 1/2 cup water
- 3 tbsp oil or additional applesauce
- 2 tsp pure vanilla extract
- 1 tbsp white vinegar
- 1 1/2 cups flour (white, spelt, or oat)
- 1/3 cup sugar
- 3/4 tsp salt
- 3/4 tsp baking soda
- 3/4 tsp baking powder
- 1/4 tsp cinnamon and optional 1/4 tsp allspice
- optional 1/2 cup raisins, chopped walnuts, or shredded coconut
Instructions
- To make homemade applesauce cake, first preheat the oven to 350 F. Whisk liquid ingredients, then add all remaining ingredients to form a batter. Smooth into a greased or lined 8-inch pan. Bake 18 minutes on the oven's center rack. Let cool, then frost as desired. The cake will taste even sweeter the next day!View Nutrition Facts
Video
Notes
More Healthy Cake Recipes
Absolutely wonderful! Moist, flavorful, and leftovers are going to be great for breakfast without feeling unhealthy. With just a little powdered sugar and sliced strawberries on top. Next time I might add some crushed walnuts to the batter.
This was excellent!
I had high hopes for this cake but was very disappointed. I made the recipe as written using the oat flour option. It came out like a dense flavorless sponge. Thankfully I had some maple butter on hand to make it palatable. CCK’s recipes are very hit or miss, and this one was unfortunately a miss.
Hi Elle, what other specific ingredients did you use? Sweetener, oil, etc. And do you live at a high elevation? Is your oven calibrated? There are already other successful reviews so it definitely doesn’t have a typo, but we’d love to help troubleshoot what you did. We just can’t try to guess without more information. Not sure if you’ve ever baked with oat flour before, but it will always be denser than spelt or white flour so it might just be that you’re not personally a fan of oat flour baked goods in general, which is completely ok.
To close the loop on this: I used the oil-free option with the oat flour option, otherwise followed the recipe exactly (and my oven temp/timing also followed the recipe; I live at sea level). If I had to guess, the oil-free option + oat flour permutation probably made the cake too dense. I’m glad others had success with it though and might recommend others use the other type of flour for a more cake-like texture.
I’ve used 1/3 of each (1/2cup each) of almond flour, oat, and Bob’s 1-1. I believe this makes it fluffier.
Miyokoskitchen Butter ✅
Treelinecheese ✅
No need to harm the animals.😊
I made mine with oat flour too and it was delicious. Five members of my family also loved it. It sounds like the commenter above probably measured something wrong.
We will be making this recipe again!
SO good! Making this again for Thanksgiving!
This was great with a cup of coffee. I sprinkled powdered sugar on top (just a little) but otherwise it didn’t need any frosting.
Thank you so much for making it!
Hey Kate, thanks for this cake recipe. It turned out just as good as I hoped and looked like the pictures, which is rare in my experiences with blog recipes in general.
Fabulous guilt-free cake recipe! It has such a nice texture and the flavor of spice cake without having that “fake” taste of boxed versions. I used spelt flour rather than oat, and added one extra TBSP of applesauce to replace one TBSP of the oil. It needed an extra five minutes to bake, but came out perfect. I cut my cake into squares and froze them individually wrapped so I can have cake anytime. I just stir up a little bit of icing with powdered sugar, vanilla, and milk when I’m ready to eat a slice. This recipe is definitely a keeper and so easy to make. Thank you!
Thank you so much for making it 🙂
This was quite yummy. I did the fat free version.
Just wanting to double check …. bake for only 15 minutes?? Super excited to try this recipe; but brought mine out of the oven to find it more underbaked rather than super moist!
Can I use a milk alternative instead of the water? Maybe I’m crazy, but I always feel like using water takes away an opportunity for flavor.
Hi! Sorry we have never tried it. In general, we find that recipes made with milk instead of water are a bit denser and more gummy in texture, but otherwise yes it should be fine to use as long as you don’t mind that 🙂
Love this! I use pumpkin instead of applesauce and it’s so delicious with some lightly sweetened cream cheese on top. I do bake it for around 20 minutes, not 15.
Thank you so much for making it 🙂