I came across the Hummingbird cake in the Hummingbird Bakery book. Before that, I have to accept my ignorance, I had no idea such a cake even existed.
At a first glance, this looked challenging and not something I would like to take on, as nice as it looked. But then a colleague of mine asked me to bake for a Birthday and the request was for a cake that must be ridiculously sweet. Hummingbird cake seemed to qualify with pineapple, banana and cream cheese icing all in one – it HAD to meet the criteria. So I set out to read up on it and try and understand how to make this beauty.
For a first time, I have to say it turned out beautifully moist, richly sweet and people loved it. I’ve used the Hummingbird recipe as a guidance and added subtracted to my taste. Originally this cake is made with Pecans. I had none, so I made it with walnuts. Feel free to use either.
Ingredients
1 cup + 1/3 cup sugar
3 eggs
1 cup + 1/4 cup oil
3 bananas
1 tsp cinnamon
2 cup + 2 tbsp flour
1 tsp baking soda
pinch of salt
1/4 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup sliced canned pineapple OR 3 1/4 slices from can
1 cup walnuts
Icing:
Directions:
- Preheat oven to 170 C
- Beat the sugar, eggs, oil, bananas and vanilla until combined
- Sift the flour, cinnamon, baking soda and salt
- Add the flour mixture into the wet ingredients in 3 batches and stir together, just enough to combine
- Finally add the pineapples and walnuts. Give a good stir to mix together
- Pour into a 9 ” cake tin and bake for 1 hr. If you have 2 cake tins you can split the batter into 2 8 ” pans. It will cook faster, around 20-25 mins and no hassle of splitting the cake.
- Insert skewer to ensure the cake is cooked
- Once cooled remove from pan. Keep the cake in the fridge for at least 1-2 hours before frosting. It will make it more manageable
- Split the cake in 2 and use 1/4 of the icing on the first layer, spreading with a palette knife. Place the 2nd cake layer on top and press down gently to put into place.
- Take a small amount of icing and apply a very thin layer on top and all around the cake in order to flatten the crumbs out. Refrigerate for 30 mins and come back to top with remaining icing. This will help to give your cake a clean look with no crumbs peaking out.
- Spread the remaining icing on top and all around evenly using a palette knife
- Decorate with a dust of cinnamon and walnuts or pecans
