Brown Butter Bourbon Spice Cakelets

Baked until golden and dipped in bourbon-cinnamon glaze, these festive brown butter bourbon spice cakelets make the perfect fall dessert!

Brown Butter Bourbon Spice Cakelets

With fall still clinging to the air and fiery leaves scattered beneath the trees, now is the time to bake up leaf, acorn, and pumpkin cakelets for a fine addition to any autumn feast!

Fragrant with nutty brown butter and warming spice, these tender cakelets are sweet and perfectly spiced. Dipped in bourbon-cinnamon glaze, there’s simply no better finish to a chilly fall day than a scrumptious mini cake.

New to making brown butter? Check out my easy step-by-step tutorial to make brown butter in 5 minutes!

Brown Butter Bourbon Spice Cakelets

More fall cake recipes to try:

Brown Butter Pumpkin Spice Cakes
Apple Praline Bundt Cake
Apple Cider Bundt Cake

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Brown Butter Bourbon Spice Cakelets

Brown Butter Bourbon Spice Cakelets

  • Author: Laura Kasavan
  • Prep Time: 20 minutes
  • Cook Time: 20 minutes
  • Total Time: 40 minutes
  • Yield: 8 cakelets
  • Category: Dessert
  • Method: Bake
  • Cuisine: American
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Description

Baked until golden and dipped in bourbon-cinnamon glaze, these festive brown butter bourbon spice cakelets make the perfect fall dessert!


Ingredients

Cakelets

  • 1/4 cup unsalted butter
  • 1 1/2 cups flour
  • 3/4 cup sugar
  • 1 1/2 tsp cinnamon
  • 1/2 tsp allspice
  • 1/2 tsp ginger
  • 1/4 tsp cloves
  • 1/4 tsp nutmeg
  • 1/2 tsp baking powder
  • 1/4 tsp baking soda
  • 1/4 tsp salt
  • 1/4 cup light brown sugar
  • 1 large egg plus 1 egg yolk, at room temperature
  • 3/4 cup low-fat buttermilk, at room temperature
  • 2 Tbsp bourbon
  • 1 tsp vanilla extract

Glaze

  • 1 Tbsp unsalted butter, melted
  • 2/3 cup powdered sugar, sifted
  • 1/4 tsp cinnamon
  • 1/4 tsp salt
  • 1 tsp bourbon
  • 1 tsp vanilla extract
  • 1 Tbsp milk

Instructions

  1. Preheat oven to 350°F and grease and flour a 3-cup cakelet pan. Cook butter in a heavy saucepan over medium heat, stirring constantly until it foams, turns clear, and then turns a deep brown, about 6 minutes. Pour brown butter into a glass measuring cup and let cool slightly.
  2. Whisk together flour, sugar, cinnamon, allspice, ginger, cloves, nutmeg, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a large bowl. Make a well in the center of the mixture. Pour cooled brown butter into a medium bowl and whisk in brown sugar, egg, egg yolk, buttermilk, bourbon, and vanilla until smooth. Add to flour mixture and fold in until combined.
  3. Fill each cavity 2/3 full and tap pan sharply to remove air bubbles. Bake for 20 minutes, until cakelets are golden, spring back to the touch, and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool cakelets in pan on a wire rack for 10 minutes before inverting onto rack to cool completely.
  4. For the glaze, whisk together melted butter, powdered sugar, cinnamon, salt, bourbon, vanilla, and milk in a small bowl. Set rack with cakelets over a piece of wax paper. Dip cakelet tops into glaze and let set on rack before serving.

Notes

Cakelet pan from Nordic Ware. Alternatively, pour batter into 3 mini (5 3/4″ x 3 3/4″) loaf pans and bake on a preheated baking sheet for approximately 30 to 32 minutes.

Brown butter: Check out my full step-by-step recipe tutorial.

Keywords: Brown Butter, Bourbon, Spice Cake

Brown Butter Bourbon Spice Cakelets

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49 Comments

  1. I love anything mini and these cakelets are super duper cute! 🙂 I love the flavoring ofcourse, and that there is bourbon in there 😉 Yummy!

  2. My most cherished Thanksgiving memories are from when my grandmother was living and hosting the dayat her house. We are a large family but she was always adamant that we all sit around one table to share the meal, so we would put big sheets of plywood and a table cloth over the pool table in the basement. As a kid, it was fun and quirky to sit around such a huge table with aunts, uncles, and cousins all together.

  3. The kids always played bumper pool after Thanksgiving meal. I have many memories playing with my cousins with oldies music playing and stuffing ourselves till it hurt! For some reason, I always had the lemon meringue pie…there where so many desserts and I always wanted that no matter what season. Whenever I think of bumper pool, it reminds me of lemons!

  4. Crowding around grandma’s table in her tiny house, wondering how she was able to prepare all of that food!

  5. My favorite Thanksgiving memory is when my fiance came for the first time to be with me and my family:) Happy times! I can’t wait to do it again this year!

  6. Getting together with all of my family on my Dad’s side he has a big Italian family and playing games with all of my cousins, Aunts, Uncles and the most wonderful Grandma.

  7. Absolutely perfect little cakes and you’ve reminded me that I own one of these pans that I must bake some of these up asap 🙂

  8. These are so darn cute!! I just love everything about holidays but love the cooking part and feeding family!

  9. This looks so yummy!!! My favorite thanksgiving memory is when my family and I stayed in a cabin with some close family friends and we had thanksgiving dinner together, even though we had to make some of the food by microwave because our stove wasn’t working.

  10. omg these are too cute!!!! My favorite Thanksgiving memories are cooking my grandmother’s recipes with my mother. So meaningful to feel their connection and forge one with a wonderful woman I never got to meet through the power of cooking! Thanks!

  11. My family is small and Thanksgiving hasn’t usually been a big deal for us. My favorite memory is the year my mom and I did Thanksgiving, just the two of us, and shared a Cornish hen instead of a turkey, complete with stuffing, cranberry sauce, and the like!

  12. how sweet are these cakes? and that glaze! my favorite memories are always in the kitchen the day before. listening to music, prepping, setting the table and preparing for my family’s arrival. sometimes the anticipation of the holiday is my favorite part!