Eggnog Cake

This Eggnog Cake with cream cheese frosting and white chocolate ganache is just the thing to warm you up this Holiday season!

Our Christmas stuff is up! Finally! I am SO excited.

We’ve been holding off because we were having a good chunk of the place painted last week and didn’t want to have the holiday decorations taking over. But now the painting is finished and it’s full-on Christmas mode in the Liv for Cake household.

Our stack of holiday movies has been unpacked, dusted off, and neatly piled in our tv room so we can start making our way through our favorites.

We have a few movies that we watch every year on specific days, because we’re crazy like that.

The Holiday (my absolute fave) usually kicks off the first night of Christmas break, and National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation gets watched twice — the night we put the tree up (which is usually mid-November) and again on Christmas Eve. It’s a classic!

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Some of our holiday movies don’t get as much love as they deserve.

Remember all those stop motion ones when we were growing up? Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer, Santa Claus Is Coming to Town, etc. All of those are in our collection, but we almost never watch them.

They’re just not the same for some reason. And why does Rudolph seem so epically LONG these days? I’ve tried to watch it, but it’s like never-ending.

Old classics like It’s a Wonderful Life, White Christmas, and Holiday Inn rarely get watched as well, but I love having them in our collection.

A recent new fave of ours is Arthur Christmas — super cute and fun!

And another less-known fave of mine is While You Were Sleeping (does anyone know that one??). It’s totally cheesy, but I love a good Sandra Bullock movie.

And, of course, no Christmas is complete without at least one viewing of Mickey’s Christmas Carol and the various holiday Disney shorts.

Wow, I’ve rambled on for 4 paragraphs about Christmas movies. Don’t even get me started on our Christmas decorations. That’s a whole post unto itself.

How to make this Eggnog Cake

Alright, this is it. This Eggnog Cake is my last eggnog recipe of the season. Are you sick of them yet?

Totally understand if you might be, but for some reason I was on an eggnog kick this year. I go through phases with stuff, and I guess this year it was eggnog’s turn.

The cake recipe itself uses over a cup of eggnog in the batter as some brown sugar and nutmeg. The flavor and texutre of the cake is amazing. You will love it!!

Ganache Drip

I love the naked cake style, and if you’ve been following Liv for Cake for a while, you know that I love a drippy ganache!

White chocolate is actually not my favorite, so this is my first time using it in a ganache, but I think it worked great on this Eggnog Cake.

In hindsight, I should have made the ganache with eggnog instead of cream (duh). So I recommend doing that instead.

Not totally sure how it would work, but I’m thinking it would be ok and add some extra flavor — in case you’d like to amp up the eggnog even more, it’s something you could try.

Cream Cheese Frosting

Also, I forgot to put nutmeg in the frosting (lol).

I fully intended to, as it pairs so well with eggnog (there is nutmeg in the cake), but I was in a rush (as usual) and I thought that I didn’t need to grab my recipe notebook because the frosting was the same as I’d used on the Gingerbread Cake from last week.

Except that after I put the cake together, I realized that I specifically wanted to make the frosting a bit different and add nutmeg to it (sigh). Oh well! It’s delicious as-is, but a bit more nutmeg couldn’t hurt, should you feel inclined to add some.

I am really happy with how this Eggnog Cake turned out! It is delicious and looks better than I thought it would, which almost never happens.

The eggnog flavor really comes through, and the sweet cake pairs really well with the tangy cream cheese frosting. The white chocolate ganache adds both flavor and flair. A perfect cake for the holiday season!

Notes & tips for this Spiked Eggnog Cake:

• Dec 15, 2019 – Recipe revised to make taller layers. The layers should bake up to be 2″ tall in three 6″ cake pans.
• The recipe as-is will also work in two 8″ pans. For three 8″ pans, 1.5x the recipe.
• To make cupcakes, all you need to do is reduce the baking time — start checking at 15mins or so.
• The cooled cake layers can be baked ahead of time, double wrapped in plastic wrap, and frozen for up to 3 months. Take out 2-3 hours before assembly.
• The frosting can be placed in an airtight container and refrigerated for 1 week for frozen for 3 months. Bring to room temp and rewhip before using.
• You can leave the rum out or replace it with vanilla or rum extract if you’d like a kid-friendly cake.
• I forgot to include the nutmeg in my frosting but had intended to have it in there!
• If the ganache is too thick (mine was a bit), add in a tsp of heavy cream until it gets to a thin enough consistency.
• You will have some rum simple syrup leftover. You can use this to sweeten/spike cocktails or hot beverages like coffee or hot chocolate.
• Learn how to keep your cakes moist using Simple Syrup.
• To help ensure your cake layers bake up nice and flat, check out my How to Bake Flat Cake Layers post!

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Eggnog Cake

4.84 from 25 votes

This Eggnog Cake with cream cheese frosting and white chocolate ganache is just the thing to warm you up this Holiday season!

Course Dessert

Cuisine American

Prep Time 2 hours hours

Cook Time 35 minutes minutes

Total Time 2 hours hours 35 minutes minutes

Servings 12

Calories 821kcal

Author Olivia

Ingredients

 

US CustomaryMetric

 

1x2x3x

Eggnog Cake:

• 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 1/4 tsp baking powder
• 3/4 tsp salt
• 3/4 tsp nutmeg ground
• 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon ground
• 3/4 cup unsalted butter room temperature
• 3/4 cup granulated sugar
• 3/4 cup light brown sugar packed
• 3 large eggs room temperature
• 1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 1/4 cup eggnog room temperature

Rum Simple Syrup:

• 1/2 cup water
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 1 Tbsp rum

Cream Cheese Frosting:

• 1 1/2 cup unsalted butter room temperature
• 8 oz cream cheese full fat, room temperature
• 4 1/2 cups powdered sugar
• 1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 3/4 tsp nutmeg * ground, optional

White Chocolate Ganache:

• 3 oz white chocolate chopped
• 1 oz heavy whipping cream or eggnog

Instructions

 

Eggnog Cake:

• Preheat oven to 350F and grease and flour three 6″ cake rounds, line with parchment.
• In a medium bowl, whisk flour, baking powder, nutmeg, cinnamon, and salt. Set aside.
• Using a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat butter until smooth. Add sugars and beat on med-high until pale and fluffy (2-3mins).
• Reduce speed and add eggs one at a time, fully incorporating after each addition. Add vanilla.
• Alternate adding flour mixture and eggnog, beginning and ending with flour (3 additions of flour and 2 of eggnog). Fully incorporating after each addition. Do not overmix.
• Spread batter evenly into prepared pans. Smooth the tops with a spatula.
• Bake for approx. 30-35mins or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out mostly clean.
• Place cakes on wire rack to cool for 10mins then turn out onto wire rack. Allow cakes to cool completely.

Rum Simple Syrup:

• Place sugar and water into a small saucepan and cook over high heat until simmering and sugar is dissolved. Remove from heat and stir in rum. Allow to cool slightly before using on cake.

Cream Cheese Frosting:

• Beat butter and cream cheese until fluffy (2 mins). Add powdered sugar one cup at a time. Add vanilla & nutmeg and beat until fluffy (3 mins).

White Chocolate Ganache:

• Place chopped chocolate and cream (or eggnog) into a microwave safe bowl. Stir to combine. Microwave for 20 seconds, stir. Microwave in 10 second intervals, stirring in between, until smooth and silky. Set aside to cool and thicken slightly before using on cake.

Assembly:

• Trim the tops of the cakes slightly to remove the "crust". Brush each cake layer with about 2-3Tbsp of simple syrup***.
• Place one layer of cake on a cake stand or serving plate. Top with 2/3 cup of frosting. Repeat with remaining layers and apply a thin coat of frosting all over the cake. Use a bench scraper to smooth the sides. Chill for 20mins.
• Using a teaspoon, drip ganache along the edges then fill in the top and smooth. Chill for 15mins. Sprinkle with nutmeg and top with rosettes if desired I used a 1M tip.

Notes

* I forgot to include the nutmeg in my frosting but had intended to have it in there!
** If the ganache is too thick (mine was a bit), add in a tsp of heavy cream until it gets to a thin enough consistency.
*** You will have some rum simple syrup leftover. You can use this to sweeten/spike cocktails or hot beverages like coffee or hot chocolate.

Calories: 821kcalCarbohydrates: 101gProtein: 7gFat: 44gSaturated Fat: 27gCholesterol: 178mgSodium: 251mgPotassium: 235mgFiber: 1gSugar: 81gVitamin A: 1474IUVitamin C: 1mgCalcium: 127mgIron: 2mg

The nutritional information and metric conversions are calculated automatically. I cannot guarantee the accuracy of this data. If this is important to you, please verify with your favorite nutrition calculator and/or metric conversion tool.

Originally published on Dec 4, 2016