Pumpkin Pie Spice Substitutes: Homemade Blends, Apple Pie Spice and Single Spices

Out of pumpkin pie spice? Make your swap mostly cinnamon, with something sharp and something clove-like behind it. Cinnamon leads the blend: it’s first on McCormick’s label,¹ and US rules require ingredients to be listed in descending order of weight.² Allspice or cloves can cover the clove note and ginger the bite. If you have apple pie spice, The Spice House says you can use the two blends interchangeably.³

Quick answer

How the ratios on this page are labeled

Every ratio carries one of four labels.

• Computed: based on a measurable physical relationship.
• Attributed: a named source publishes this ratio. We quote it as theirs.
• Disputed: named sources give different answers to the same swap. You get each one, side by side.
• Method: our starting point, based on how the two compare. Taste and adjust.

Why the swaps work

Each spice in the blend does its own job, and a substitute works when it keeps the same balance.

• Cinnamon. The sweet, warm backbone.
• Cloves and allspice. Both oils are mostly eugenol, and that shared compound is why recipes use one or the other.⁴⁵ McCormick’s blend has allspice and no cloves,¹ while Oregon State’s has cloves and no allspice.⁶ Allspice got its name because it tastes like a combination of cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves.
• Ginger. It adds bite, not aroma.
• Nutmeg. It rounds the blend out instead of doubling up on the cinnamon.

If it is spicing a pumpkin pie or custard

1. Make your own

A basic homemade pumpkin pie spice, about 1/4 cup: 3 tablespoons ground cinnamon, 2 teaspoons ground ginger, 1 teaspoon ground nutmeg, 1 teaspoon ground allspice and 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves. It follows the order on McCormick’s label, cinnamon first,¹ with a little cloves for a sharper note.

Published recipes vary in style. Oregon State’s Food Hero mix is more gingery and uses only cloves for the clove note,⁶ while The Spice House uses both allspice and cloves.³ Any of them is a fair stand-in for a store-bought jar, since no brand publishes its proportions.

How much to use (Attributed): King Arthur’s advice for its own blend is to substitute an equal amount of blend for the total amount of spice in a pumpkin pie recipe.⁷ Flip that around: use the same total amount of your homemade mix as the recipe asks for pumpkin pie spice.

2. Skip the blend and use the spices directly

Lots of pumpkin pie recipes list the spices one by one. Libby’s Famous Pumpkin Pie, for one, uses cinnamon, ginger and cloves, with the most cinnamon and the least cloves.⁸ If your recipe calls for pumpkin pie spice, you can measure out the same amount from the individual spices. Just keep cinnamon as the biggest share.

Ratio (Attributed): Use the same total amount of individual spices as the recipe asks for blend, following King Arthur’s equal-amount rule.⁷

If you’ve got whole spices, McCormick’s grinding conversions apply: a 1 1/2-inch cinnamon stick gives about 1 teaspoon ground, half a nutmeg about 1 teaspoon, and 5 allspice berries about 1 teaspoon (Computed, volume only).⁹ Those tell you nothing about how strong the freshly ground spice will taste.

If it is warmth in muffins, quick breads, oatmeal or lattes

Apple pie spice

The Spice House says you can use the two blends interchangeably.³ They’re close cousins, but not twins:

So McCormick’s apple pie spice has no ginger, and The Spice House’s adds star anise. The Spice House’s substitution article also says its apple pie spice has cardamom,³ but as far as we can tell its product page doesn’t list cardamom.¹¹ Check your jar.

Ratio (Attributed): The Spice House says interchangeable, so 1:1.³ If your apple pie spice has no ginger, a small pinch of ground ginger gets it closer.

If you only have one or two of the spices

Cinnamon plus one other

Ratio (Attributed): For 1 teaspoon of pumpkin pie spice, The Spice House says to use 3/4 teaspoon cinnamon and 1/4 teaspoon of ginger, allspice, cloves or nutmeg. With two of those, use 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon and 1/4 teaspoon of each.³

Of the four, allspice comes closest on its own, for the reason above. Cloves are the most assertive, so if they’re your second spice, treat that 1/4 teaspoon as a ceiling, not a target.

Cinnamon alone

The Spice House says the blend is mostly cinnamon anyway, so plain cinnamon will do, with some loss of complexity.³

Ratio (Method): Start with the same amount as the pumpkin pie spice.

No cinnamon: ginger or allspice

Ratio (Attributed): The Spice House says ginger or allspice can stand in at half the amount, because both are stronger than cinnamon.³

What isn’t known

• No brand publishes its pumpkin pie spice proportions, so there’s no way to show a homemade recipe matches a particular jar.
• No regulator or standards body gives a shelf life for homemade spice blends, and we couldn’t trace claims that a homemade mix keeps “up to a year.”
• You’ll often read that cloves dominate most pumpkin pie spice blends. McCormick’s blend has no cloves at all,¹ and in Oregon State’s recipe cloves are the smallest share.⁶

Related

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