Apple Pie Spice vs. Pumpkin Pie Spice (Recipes + Store-Bought Favorites)

What's the Difference?

Apple pie spice and pumpkin pie spice are warm baking spices that honestly are pretty similar. Cinnamon is the biggest component of both blends, along with cozy flavors like nutmeg, allspice, and usually cloves. Every person or spice company zhuzhes their blends a little differently, but those are generally present across the board.

The biggest difference between the two is that pumpkin pie spice includes a fair amount of ground ginger. Ginger's zippiness is a nice foil to the creaminess and sweetness of pumpkin pies, and brings a warmth we've come to expect in canned pumpkin recipes and other baked goods.

Apple pie spice has more wiggle room. You can leave it at cinnamon, nutmeg, and allspice (McCormick does), or jazz it up with one or more of cardamom, cloves, mace, star anise, etc. Some also add a bit of ginger, though it's not as prominent.

Are Apple Pie Spice and Pumpkin Pie Spice Interchangeable?

You can substitute apple pie spice with pumpkin pie spice and vice versa in lots of recipes, yeah!

Yes: Anywhere you'd enjoy cinnamon flavor with extra pizzazz. Baked goods like muffins, quick breads, spice or applesauce cakes, my fav whole wheat waffles with buttermilk, pancakes, oatmeal, french toast, etc.

No: I would be a purist and stick to their namesake's if making an apple or pumpkin pie, or something that is classically pumpkin based (my Bisquick pumpkin bread or pumpkin bread with maple syrup, for example). Not that using the other would result in a terrible pie or bread or anything, but you'd likely miss the slight bite of ginger in your pumpkin-y custard mixture or bread batter and have extra hopped up and zippy apples in your apple pie. Maybe to your taste, but maybe not.

Making Pie Spices at Home

When it comes to what you'll need, there's a Venn diagram with a hefty overlap here. For either pie spice variety, you'll need ground cinnamon, ground nutmeg, ground allspice, and ground cloves. If you're a baker, you'll likely have them on hand already.

From there, ground ginger is a main component of pumpkin pie spice, while I like to add ground cardamom to apple pie spice for a pungent, almost herbal-y/fruity/citrus-y element.

In my experience both blends are highly fragrant when mixing up a batter (so you may worry you've used too much), but they mellow out in flavor once baked.

Ways to Use Them (Besides Pies)

• Flavoring coffee - Stir pumpkin or apple pie spice into your coffee grounds before brewing coffee for festive fall flavor. Start small so it doesn't end up too potent.
• Sweet popcorn - Make a batch of homemade kettle corn and sprinkle a pumpkin or apple pie spice + sugar combo over top.
• Compound butter - We make pumpkin spice butter at the start of each fall and freeze mini logs to enjoy all season long. An apple pie spice version would be tasty, too.
• Applesauce - I typically use ½-teaspoon of ground cinnamon in my Instant Pot applesauce (with no-peel apples!). Replace with apple pie spice for a fancier spin.
• Oatmeal cookies - Either flavor would work. You can replace the total amount of cinnamon, allspice, and nutmeg in my house recipe brown butter oatmeal raisin cookies for a fall twist.
• Banana bread - Jazz up my banana bread with Bisquick or your favorite banana bread recipe with either blend.
• Homemade granola - Just yum.
• Pancakes - One of my most frequent uses. The above photo is a baked pancake I made using pancake mix and apple pie spice (didn't even add apples to the batter) and it was fab!
• Cinnamon sugar toast - Replace the cinnamon with the pie spice of your choice. I like a ratio of 1:4 cinnamon/spice to granulated sugar.
• Ravioli filling - You know that classic pumpkin ravioli dish in a sage and brown butter sauce? Use a bit of pumpkin pie spice in the pumpkin filling for easily elevated flavor.

Storage & Gifting Tips

Store homemade pumpkin and apple pie spices in air-tight containers in a cool, dry spot like a pantry or kitchen cabinet. Small mason jars with lids are good if making a larger quantity, but I also like to reuse store-bought glass spice jars after thoroughly washing and drying them. Plus they usually come with the little shaker hole top for easy sprinkling.

(I prefer jars with a screw top vs. those cutie cork lids as I don't have to worry about them popping off and spilling when I'm rustling around my pantry.)

To gift pie spices (fabulous as a host or hostess gift), you'll need the aforementioned jars and a name tag label. You can find some cute ones on Etsy or Amazon, but also consider making your own via Canva or another digital design tool if you have a printer and label paper.

My Favorite Store-Bought Pie Spices

I've bought both pumpkin and apple pie spice from The Spice House and really enjoy them! The ingredients list on both are a tad more extensive than my homemade versions with mace added to their pumpkin spice (paid link) and ground star anise to their apple pie spice (paid link), so buying these premade blends feels fancier and more worthwhile than the brands made up of just pantry staples.

While the two spices have different flavors, I've found the star anise adds a similar something special to apple pie spice as the cardamom does in my homemade version.

*Just to be clear I have no affiliation with the brand, but I love that their flat packs (paper zip-top sleeves) ship free with no minimum order.

Even More Pie Spice Recipes