This delicious Cinnamon Crack Cake Recipe is spiced with cinnamon and topped with a rich butter sauce. It’s moist, flavorful, and simple!
This is a wonderfully light, soft, and tender cinnamon-flavored sponge cake. I’m completely in love with the texture and flavor!
In my opinion, it’s always good to have a super quick and easy cake recipe to make on the ready at any time. Even if you prefer scratch-made, as I do, at some point there will be a time you need a cake in a hurry. For this reason, I keep a few favorite cake recipes and ingredients on hand.
Here are some favorite Cake Mix cakes
WHAT MAKES CINNAMON CRACK CAKE RECIPE SO GOOD?
It’s absolutely delicious and it’s the easiest cake in the world to make. (All my recipes are easy!)
This cake starts with a cake mix and vanilla pudding. Both ingredients contribute to the tenderness and flavor.
Now, this is where I deviate from the original recipe. The original Crack Cake has white wine in it, however, I used buttermilk instead.
All the ingredients are pantry staples, except the wine. That’s why I decided to substitute buttermilk for the wine. You can also use whole milk, water, or sour cream. Although, I recommend using water only if you don’t have milk. Water will contribute nothing to the flavor and it already has quite a lot of water in the recipe.
I topped my cake with a Butter Glaze. It’s totally optional, but I like the extra sweetness it gives the cake. This cake is not overly sweet without the glaze. I used butter, sugar, water, and vanilla in the glaze.
MORE TIPS
The first time I made this cake half of it stuck in the pan when I tried to turn it out onto a serving plate. Therefore, I highly recommend you grease your bundt pan (or tube pan) very well with solid vegetable shortening then either flour or sugar. Or, use Wilton Cake Release.
While you’re here, check out these recipes
- Amaretto Peach Upside Down Pound Cake
- 10 Ridiculously Easy Pound Cake recipes
- Coffee Cake Pound Cake
- Orange Creamsicle Pound Cake

CINNAMON CRACK CAKE RECIPE
Want to save recipes? Create an account or login & then you can use the “Save Recipe” button when viewing a recipe to save it to your Recipe Box. You can access your saved recipes on any device and generate a shopping list for recipes in your collections.
Save To Your Recipe BoxIngredients
CAKE
- 15.25 ounce cake mix yellow
- 3.4 ounce instant pudding vanilla
- ¼ cup brown sugar packed
- ¼ cup granulated sugar
- 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
- 4 large eggs at room temperature
- ¾ cup water
- ¼ cup vegetable oil
- ½ cup buttermilk whole milk, water, or white wine
BUTTER GLAZE
- ⅓ cup butter
- ¾ cup granulated sugar
- 3 tablespoons water
- 2 teaspoons vanilla
Instructions
CAKE
- Preheat oven to 350 and grease a bundt pan generously with solid vegetable shortening then dust with flour or granulated sugar or coat with Wilton cake release. Set aside.
- In the bowl of your electric mixer, add cake mix, vanilla pudding, sugars, and cinnamon. Stir to combine.
- Add eggs, water, oil, and buttermilk and mix well.
- Pour into prepared pan.
- Bake for 45 to 5 minutes or until a wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean or with dry crumbs.
- Remove the cake from the oven and set aside while making the sauce.
BUTTER GLAZE
- Add butter, sugar, and water to a sauce pan.
- Cook over medium heat whisking constantly until boiling. Continue to stir and boil for 1 minute or until sugar is no longer grainy. Remove the pan from the heat and stir in the vanilla.
- Pour mixture over warm cake and let set before inverting the cake onto a serving plate
- This cake is great served warm with vanilla ice cream. Store in an airtight container in the refrigerator for 5 days.
Nutrition
You can also find great recipes here or at Meal Plan Monday or Weekend Potluck.

Kathy says
Really wish I could save your individual recipes to Pinterest from here.
Paula says
You can save to Pinterest, there’s a Pin It button on the first photo
Melissa says
The name… Why that wording? It isn’t a funny saying to me…
Paula says
I’m unsure why the name, I found a similar recipe in my mom’s recipe box and updated/adapted it.