Easy Cinnamon Roll Cake
Easy Cinnamon Roll Cake is absolute perfection. Simple to make, crazy delicious loaded with cinnamon sugar and covered in sweet icing!
This cake is easily a favorite in my house. I actually thought I had shared the recipe for this cake a long time ago…turns out I didn’t. You see when you bake as often as I do things get jumbled. Maybe it’s all the sugar? Nah…
Anyhow, this is the world’s easiest cake. My kids even request it for their birthday cake which seems so weird to me…hello no buttercream…but we all know kids are weird. Or maybe they aren’t…
MY OTHER RECIPESThis cake is that good.
Yes, my cake mix-phobic friends I shortcutted this. I know I know, you are all probably so disappointed in me. And yes please, if you would like to use your own cake recipe please do so. Just start the recipe when you add cinnamon sugar…I’ll explain that in a minute.
But first let’s take a look…the gooey cake, the drippy icing, the swirly cinnamon.
Hold me.
Like I said the cake itself it super duper easy. You’re basically doctoring up a cake mix a little bit.
THEN you make a little (a lot) of cinnamon sugar.
You sprinkle that all over the top of the batter…
And gently swirl that in with a knife…
Don’t over swirl it though. You don’t want to mix it all in, you want gorgeous ribbons of cinnamon throughout.
Bake it up and it behold…
And then make a quick icing and behold again…
Your cake will be drowning in icing and loving every minute.
And if you can, wait until the icing sets up to cut it…
Or don’t. I get you.
Make it. Eat it. Love it.
- 1 (15.25- ounce) box yellow cake mix
- 4 eggs
- ¾ cup vegetable oil
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- 1 cup sour cream (not light)
- 1 cup light brown sugar
- 1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
- 2 cups powdered sugar
- 3 tablespoons milk
- Preheat the oven to 325°F. Coat a 9x13 pan with nonstick spray and set aside.
- In the bowl of your stand mixer combine the cake mix, eggs, oil, vanilla and sour cream. Mix on low for 30 seconds and then raise the speed to medium and mix for 2 minutes, scraping the sides of the bowl as necessary.
- Spread the cake batter into your prepared pan. In a medium bowl whisk together the brown sugar and cinnamon. Sprinkle this evenly on top of your cake.
- Using a butter knife gently swirl the cinnamon sugar into the cake batter. Don't over-swirl, as you want ribbons of the mixture throughout the cake.
- Bake for 35-40 minutes or until a toothpick entered into the center of the cake comes out clean.
- Cool cake for 15-20 minutes.
- In a medium bowl whisk together the powdered sugar and milk. Pour this over the slightly warm cake. Allow the icing to set, or eat right away!
Helpful tip… Out of sour cream?
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78 Comments on "Easy Cinnamon Roll Cake"
That dribble of frosting down the middle of the cake is for me! I just know it!
Oh, lovely. I would love to have this cinnamon roll cake for my birthday too. Even without the buttercream.
I would be eating this straight out of the pan. So delicious!
I love, love, love that you have the picture of the food on the printed recipe. I am sure that we will all love this cake as well. Will be trying it for a birthday party soon.
I LOVE cinnamon rolls! Will have to try this. We aren’t big cake eaters at my house, although “coffee cake” type things don’t last long. Pinned!
This is one of my favorite cakes too! I use butter instead of oil though…usually oil in a cake makes it dry (in my opinion—even if it does add flavor), but with all that lovely sour cream, you can get away with using butter and still have a moist cake. I’ve never tried both versions (butter vs. oil) side by side though….too many experiments, too little time. 🙂
Oh yes! good catch…I added the vanilla to the recipe steps!
SO glad y’all liked it!!
#2 in the instructions above lists the vanilla to add with the other ingredients…
Yes, if you’ll notice Shelly’s comment above, she added it later in response to my question.
hi julie can you tell me how much applesauce you put in? thanks
Sure! It’s a 1 for 1 sub so 3/4 c. I do this in all my baking. 🙂
OMG this must be DELICIOUS. I will try this next weekend.
I just make a pancake version of this since I didn’t have any yellow cake mix. My husband loved them and now he’s offering to do all the weekend chores.(hehehe devil face emoji, did I plan for that to happen?)
Thanks, Shelly!
This post is Wonderfull . I love it and I am going to share it with my friends. Hope you will share also .
May be you will like to know about Nutribullet recipes http://www.nutrirecipes.org/
So hilarious!!
What was the pancake version receipt as I don’t have cake mix
Oh my goodness!
Made this today. It is excellent. I will be making again to take to work. Thanks so much.
Oh wow, this looks practically pornographic. PHWOAR
I made this and it turned out very moist. It was amazing. I loved it
Yum! I’m thinking cupcake cinnamon rolls…
Do you think I can make it the night before and ice it in the morning, for breakfast?
Sure!!
This cake is just completely amazing. I must eat this!
Not “phobic” about cake mixes; just prefer to use trusted ingredients.
This cake was very good using a from scratch yellow cake recipe. Everyone who ate it raved about it.
Thanks.
awesome!! good to know!!
I accidentally left out the oil. How bad do you think the cake will be? 🙁 no time to remake it.
hmmm… it might be a little dry and dense. Let me know how it comes out!
I am not a fan of the frosting but the cake itself is delicious.
So glad you liked it!
I have made this twice now in a 9×13 and both times I couldn’t get it to bake through until after an hour. The bottom stays gooey. Any one deal with this? The top ends up browning and the bottom stays wet.
Have you checked your oven temp lately? It sounds like your oven might be a little hot. I have this happen from time to time… Just buy a cheap oven thermometer and give it a quick check!
THIS IS AMAZING!! I am SO glad you got the IP… it’s FANTASTIC! And thank you so so much for ordering the book!!!
I felt the cup of brown sugar sprinkled on the top was too much. I ended up scraping it off. I think half that amount (unpacked) would have been sufficient. The cake itself was nice and moist.
I felt the cup of sugar/cinnamon sprinkled over the top of the batter too much. Half that amount would have been sufficient. The cake itself was nice and moist.
This is the same exact recipe i found on food.com a couple years ago and make for birthdays all the time its called quick cinnamon roll cake. My family always requests it for bdays and get togethers and they call it heaven cake.
is the brown sugar paced?
Yes 🙂
Hi , is anybody there ?! I am in France , we do not have yellow cake mix, what can I use as a substitute ?
Thnk you for your help ?
Oh my goodness, Shelly, this cake is too good for words! I can’t tell you how many times I’ve made this over the past couple months! Gotta have my cake! I’ve had it warm, unwarm and even without the icing because I ran out of powdered sugar. It was superb no matter what! Thanks so much!!
I don’t know what yellow cake mix is, sorry but I’ve never heard the term
we don’t have that cake mix here, what can i substitute it with?
This looks delicious! I can’t wait to try it and maybe recommend it to my readers!
This looks delicious! I can’t wait to try it and perhaps recommend it to my blog readers!
This cake is delicious. And easy to use
Definitely a keeper.
This cake was very very good. My family wanted to know if I could add apples to this recipe. Have u tried it with apples? Has anyone? If so did you apple pie filling or fresh apples? Thank you
I made this today at our restaurant…it was delicious!!! It’s our dessert of the week next week!! So yummy!
Thank you?
Can I substitute the sour cream with anything else?
Greek yogurt!
I made this tonight. It was moist and fabulous. I too thought maybe it could have been just as good with half the brown sugar. I read a review that said the cake would be dry using the oil, it was NOT. It was very moist. Thank you so much Shelly for sharing this with us. This is the first recipe I’ve made of yours, but look forward to making many more.
Hi
I was wondering if you could do this in a sheet pan? Or would it be too thin?
Or could you double the recipe and put it in a sheet pan?
Have you tried that at all?
I have to feed 25 people so I didn’t know if that would work or if I just need to make 2 of the 9 x 13 pans.
Please let me know
Thx!
This was delicious! I used a white cake mix because that’s what I had, but it turned out great! Thank you for sharing this! I’m sure my kids will request this a lot!
For the cake base, could i use the recipe for your Buttermilk Sheet Cake? THank you!
This cake was delicious! Everyone LOVED it. I will definitely make it again. Funny note: I brought it to a party and I brought the recipe with me and 3 people asked for it!!!
Awesome! So glad you liked it!
Omg!! So delicious and easy to make.
Does this cake need to be refrigerated after you ice it?
Nope! Airtight at room temperature will be fine!
Wonderful !! In fact, I just heard my grandson (18 years ) bragging about the cake to the rest of his family. He had no idea I could hear him. And the cake was leftover from 3 days ago! That is a high compliment indeed!!!
I made this cake and while delicious it rose a lot more than yours and was not as gooey looking as the picture of yours…I wonder if you have any thoughts as to why it rose so much? I followed the recipe exactly.
Can this be frozen? Or Rather how does it do upon thawing? Would you ice it before freezing or after?
It would fine being frozen, and I would ice it after it’s thawed!
Can you use a white cake mix?
You can 🙂
”1 (15.25- ounce) box yellow cake mix” LMAO
Can a I use a white cake mix in place of the yellow
sure!
It’s a family WIN WIN! Thank you for the delicious recipe.. Only thing i added was cream cheese to the icing ? yummilicious?
Don’t have a stand mixture ; Will use the hand held one.
Can’t wait to make this tomorrow morning.