This Healthy Pumpkin Cake is super moist, packed with flavor, and easy to make—just blend everything together! It’s gluten-free, dairy-free, and refined-sugar-free.
Try these Healthy Pumpkin Muffins, Healthy Pumpkin Cookies, or Healthy Pumpkin Bread next!
Healthy Pumpkin Cake—No Sugar Needed!
These Pumpkin Bars are a must-make every fall; in fact, they even claimed a spot on our Thanksgiving dessert table last year. Everyone loved them!
This year, I thought, why not channel those flavors into a more nutritious treat—one my family and I can even enjoy for breakfast?
This Healthy Pumpkin Cake delivers all the great flavors and textures, with ingredients that provide healthy fats, carbs, and protein—everything you need for a balanced treat or meal.
Healthy Pumpkin Cake Ingredients
- Pumpkin pie spice: Find it in the spice aisle or make your own.
- Pure maple syrup: A delicious sweetener with no added ingredients and makes the cake moist.
- Cashews: I prefer dry-roasted, lightly salted cashews for extra flavor.
- Coconut oil: Varies in flavor by brand. I use LouAna® Coconut Oil, which doesn’t add a strong coconut flavor.
- Pumpkin: Use plain pumpkin puree not pumpkin pie filling. I use Libby’s®.
- Old-fashioned oats: Forget the flour, oats are taking their place.
Quick Tip
The items in this Healthy Pumpkin Cake are naturally occurring gluten-free, but look at labels to ensure they weren’t made in a place with gluten.
How To Make Healthy Pumpkin Cake
- Preheat the Oven: Set to 350°F and line a baking pan with parchment paper.
- Blend Ingredients: In a blender, combine cashews, oats, oil, maple syrup, eggs, and pumpkin.
- Second Blend: Add remaining ingredients and blend once more until smooth.
- Pour and Bake: Pour batter into prepared pan and bake until set.
- Make Frosting (optional): Beat cream cheese and butter. Mix in vanilla, pumpkin pie spice, and powdered sugar until creamy.
- Frost the Cake: Let the cake cool completely before frosting.
- Slice and Serve: Cut into slices. Enjoy!
Healthy Pumpkin Cake Recipe Tips
- This recipe is quick and easy but needs a strong blender (like Blendtec® or Vitamix®) to make a smooth batter from the cashews and oats.
- Scrapes the sides as needed for even blending.
- Use a light-colored 8×8-inch pan lined with parchment paper to remove easily; light pans bounce heat better than dark ones.
- How to Tell It’s Done: The cake is done when it’s no longer shiny, the edges are solid and lightly browned, and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean or with a few crumbs.
Healthy Pumpkin Cake Frosting Options
The optional cream cheese frosting has refined sugars and dairy. If you’re not on a specific diet, it’s a delicious match. Otherwise, leave it off and sprinkle the cake with powdered sugar or spread on roasted cashew butter.
If you prepare the frosting for this cake, I love topping the frosting with a sprinkle of pumpkin pie spice for extra flavor.
Storage
Leftovers?
Store the bars in the fridge covered for 2-3 days.
Freezing: Unfrosted Healthy Pumpkin Cake freezes great for up to 3 months. Frosted bars don’t freeze well because of the cream cheese frosting.
Use Leftover Canned Pumpkin In
- Pumpkin Protein Shake ready in minutes
- Pumpkin Overnight Oats with mini chocolate chips
- No-Bake Pumpkin Cheesecake with a graham cracker crust
- Pumpkin Soup that uses canned pumpkin!
- Pumpkin Bundt Cake with a cream cheese frosting
Healthy Pumpkin Cake
Healthy Pumpkin Cake is flavorful, moist, and so simple—all you need is a blender!
Equipment
- Large blender high-powered, see note 1
- Baking pan 8 x 8-inch, lined
- Mixer
Ingredients
- Cooking spray
Pumpkin Cake
- 1 cup dry-roasted and lightly salted cashews see note 2
- 1 cup old-fashioned oats see note 3
- 1/4 cup melted coconut oil room temperature
- 3/4 cup maple syrup see note 4
- 2 large eggs
- 3/4 cup pumpkin see note 5
- 1-1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1-1/2 teaspoons each: ground cinnamon
- 1-1/2 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice
- 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
- 2 tablespoons cornstarch see note 6
Optional Cream Cheese Frosting
- 4 ounces cream cheese room temperature
- 4 tablespoons unsalted butter room temperature
- 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1/8 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice see note 7
- 1-1/2 cups powdered sugar
- 1/8 teaspoon salt
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350℉ (176℃). Line an 8 x 8-inch baking pan with parchment paper and lightly grease with cooking spray. Set aside.
- Add the cashews, oats, oil, maple syrup, eggs, and pumpkin to a large, powerful blender, and pulse until smooth—90–120 seconds. Add in the rest of the cake ingredients. Blend until smooth and creamy, about 60–90 seconds. Stop and scrape down edges as needed. Pour the batter into the prepared pan, using a spatula to scrape every bit into the pan.
- Smooth the top with the spatula and bake for 33–38 minutes or until cake is lightly browned at the edges and set in the middle. A toothpick inserted in the center should come out clean. 36 minutes is perfect in my oven!
- Place softened cream cheese in a large bowl with room temperature butter. Using a hand mixer, beat softened cream cheese and butter until smooth and creamy. Add in vanilla, pumpkin pie spice, and salt. Mix until smooth. Slowly add in the powdered sugar, beating in between additions, until smooth, creamy, and your desired consistency.
- Frost the completely cooled cake with as much frosting as you'd like. The batch of frosting makes a lot, and you can certainly use it all if you'd like, but if you want a less frosted cake, you will likely have about 1/4 to 1/2 cup extra frosting. You can save it and add to your favorite pancakes or waffles! If desired, top the frosting with a light sprinkle of pumpkin pie spice.
- Use the overhang of parchment paper to remove the pumpkin cake to a cutting board. Then use a sharp chef’s knife to make decisive cuts. Run the knife under warm water, dry it on a kitchen towel, and repeat for each cut.
Video
Recipe Notes
Note 1: You’ll need a good, powerful blender like Blendtec® or Vitamix® to break down the cashews without over-heating the machine.
Note 2: We love dry-roasted and lightly salted cashews best — more flavor without any extra effort on your part.
Note 3: Although it would make sense that any oats would work since they’re getting blended anyways, it’s important to use old-fashioned to ensure you get the right measurement. Both quick and steel-cut oats are smaller, denser, and more compact so measurements would be off and the cake would end up too dry.
Note 4: Pure maple syrup is a natural sweetener—unlike corn syrup or pancake syrup—made from the sap of a maple tree, which is boiled down to a thicker consistency. I don’t recommend any substitutes.
Note 5: Make sure to get pure canned pumpkin, not pumpkin pie filling which has added sugars and spices. We recommend Libby’s® canned pumpkin. Also note that this recipe only calls for 3/4 cup, not the entire can!
Note 6: This is an important ingredient since we aren’t using flour and need some additional support and thickness.
Note 7: This is a combination of warming spices that can be found with the other spices in the grocery store, or you can make your own pumpkin pie spice!
Nutrition: The Nutrition information does not include the optional cream cheese frosting. With the frosting, one serving of this cake is 226 calories.
Storage: To store the Healthy Pumpkin Cake, cool it completely before slicing into bars. For freezing, wrap each unfrosted bar in plastic wrap and place all the wrapped bars in a large freezer bag. Frosted bars don’t freeze as well due to the high dairy content of the cream cheese frosting, so it’s best to freeze them unfrosted. To thaw, set the bars out at room temperature or use the microwave.
Nutrition
Serving: 1serving | Calories: 156kcal | Carbohydrates: 21.3g | Protein: 2.5g | Fat: 7g | Cholesterol: 11.6mg | Sodium: 8.9mg | Fiber: 1.1g | Sugar: 12.8g
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
Will this recipe work without the cashews? It sounds delicious, but I am allergic to nuts.
Sorry it won’t work without them unfortunately!
This cake is perfect! I wouldn’t change a thing, and you would never ever guess it was so wholesome. Thanks so much!
I am so thrilled to hear this! Thanks Alicia! 🙂
Do you think flax eggs or Bob’s Egg Replacer would work instead of the 2 Large Eggs? Thanks! Sounds delicious!
Sorry Amanda, I’ve never tried either and honestly not super familiar with baking using flax eggs or egg replacer!