If mixed spice has turned up in a recipe or caught your eye at the store, here's what you need to use it with confidence and how to choose it, cook it, store it, what to substitute, and 58 recipes to try it in.

What is mixed spice?

Mixed spice is the warm, sweet spice blend at the heart of British baking. If you have made hot cross buns or a Christmas pudding, this is the jar doing most of the work.

Brits also call it pudding spice, and it smells like the holidays the moment you open it.

The blend leans hard on cinnamon, backed by nutmeg, allspice, and clove. Many versions add a little coriander or mace as well, and since there is no fixed recipe each brand tweaks the balance, but cinnamon-forward and sweetly warming is the constant.

It is a sweet-baking blend, not a savory curry-style mix, so think cakes and buns rather than stews.

How to Use Mixed Spice

Reach for mixed spice anywhere you want cozy, warm-spiced flavor in a sweet bake. It goes into the batter or the dough or the fruit, usually one to two teaspoons for a standard cake or a batch of buns.

It defines the British Christmas table. A Christmas Pudding With Vanilla-Bean Custard and a Brandy Christmas Fruit Cake both lean on it, as does a tray of My Vegetarian Mince Pies, for that deep festive warmth.

Beyond Christmas it carries the everyday teatime classics. You taste it in Hot Cross Buns and Eccles Cakes, and in fruited loaves like Barm Brack (Traditional Irish Bread - Báirín breac) and Derbyshire Tea Loaf (No Butter Fruit Cake).

Because the spices are already ground, add it with the dry ingredients and let it disperse through the flour. No toasting or blooming needed.

Pairing and Common Mistakes

Mixed spice was born to sit with dried fruit: raisins, currants, sultanas, candied peel, dates. It also loves apple, brown sugar, treacle, honey, and a splash of brandy or rum, which is why boozy fruitcakes and mincemeat are its natural home.

The most common mistake is assuming it matches pumpkin pie spice. Mixed spice is gentler and more rounded, leaning on cinnamon and allspice rather than the ginger-and-clove bite of the American blend.

The other slip is overdoing it. These spices are strong, and too much turns a delicate sponge muddy and almost soapy, so measure rather than eyeball.

Substitutes

If you cannot find mixed spice, pumpkin pie spice is the closest off-the-shelf swap, used one for one. It runs heavier on ginger and clove, so the result is a touch sharper, but in a fruitcake nobody will complain.

Better still, mix your own. A workable blend is one tablespoon ground cinnamon, one teaspoon each of allspice and nutmeg and coriander, and half a teaspoon each of clove and ginger and mace.

In a pinch, plain ground cinnamon alone will carry a recipe, just with less depth. Add a pinch of nutmeg and clove if you have them to round it out.

Buying and Storage

Mixed spice is a British and Commonwealth supermarket staple, sold premixed in the baking aisle. Outside the UK you may need an import shop or to blend your own, which is cheap and quick.

Like any ground spice blend, it fades. Stored in an airtight jar away from heat and light, it holds good flavor for about a year before the aroma goes flat and dusty.

Buy small jars you will actually use up, and give an old one a sniff before baking; if it barely smells of anything, replace it.

Mixed spice appears in more than 50 recipes here, almost all of them British and Irish bakes, a fair picture of a blend built for puddings and buns and fruitcakes.

Quick facts

In Chinese

混合香料

British (UK) term

Mixed spice

en français

mélange d'épices

en español

especias mixtas

Recipes using mixed spice

There are 58 recipes that contain this ingredient.

All 58 recipes

More mixed spice recipes

• Christmas Cake(British)
• German Pepper Cookies
• Granny's Beef & Vegetable Soup
• Lime Pickles
• Pickled String Beans
• Ripe Banana Loaf
• Rock Buns