This homemade hummingbird cake recipe has a cinnamon cream cheese frosting.
Do you have friends who are recipe sharers? I am blessed to have several in my life. My dear friend Mari brought me a recipe for Hummingbird Cake back from one of her vacations to Georgia. I was first intrigued by the name because it reminded me of a cake my Grandma made when I was a child. I decided I had to try it when I saw the cake contained pineapple and banana. I have made a few minor tweaks to the recipe because that’s how I roll, but it is close to the original recipe.
In the summer of 2001, my then 10-year-old daughter entered this hummingbird cake recipe at the county fair and received both first place and the judge’s award for her efforts. So I feel entirely justified when I say this is a seriously delicious cake!
Hummingbird cake is basically a spice cake with fruit in it. The fruit makes it slightly sweeter and adds a brighter flavor than spice cake. Since it is topped with my cinnamon cream cheese frosting it kind of reminds me of carrot cake. And perhaps because it reminds me of carrot cake, it has somehow evolved to be the cake I serve on Easter.
Hummingbird Cake Recipe
Ingredients:
3 cups all-purpose flour
2 cups sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon
3 large eggs, beaten
1 cup mild oil
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 – 8 ounce can crushed pineapple, do not drain
2 cups chopped pecans, divided
2 cups diced bananas
1 cup pecan halves
Directions:
Grease and flour three 9 inch round cake pans. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
Combine the flour, sugar, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon in a large bowl.
Add the eggs and oil, and stir by hand until the dry ingredients are moist.
Stir in the vanilla, pineapple (with juice), 1 cup of chopped pecans, and the diced bananas. Mix until thoroughly combined.
Spoon the batter into 3 greased and floured 9 inch round cake pans. Bake at 350 degrees for 25 – 30 minutes.
Cool in pans for 10 minutes. Then remove the cake from the pans and cool completely on a wire rack.
Spread the cinnamon cream cheese frosting between the layers, on top, and on all sides.
Place the pecan halves around the top of the cake.
Take the remaining chopped nuts and chop them very finely. Then press the finely chopped pecans all the way around the side of the cake.
Cinnamon Cream Cheese Frosting Recipe
If you want thick layers of icing on your hummingbird cake, you can double this frosting recipe. This cake is quite sweet, so I usually only put a thin layer of frosting on it.
Frosting Ingredients:
1 – 8 oz. cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup butter, softened
1 pound powdered sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon cinnamon
Frosting Directions:
Combine the cream cheese and butter in a mixing bowl; beating until smooth.
Your hummingbird cake can be dry due to common mistakes, such as draining your crushed pineapples. Don't drain your crushed pineapple before adding it to the recipe; make sure you're using it along with its juice, which imparts not only tons of flavor, but exquisite moistness, too.
Created in Jamaica where the dessert is called the doctor bird cake (or Dr. Bird cake), it is named after the island's national bird, the scissors-tail hummingbird (locally known as the doctor bird).
You want to take care not to accidentally over-mix the batter or the cake could end up dense and dry, or even rubbery (like over-mixed banana pancakes).
What does hummingbird cake taste like? Hummingbird cake tastes like the best banana bread ever, crossed with a carrot cake that some absent-minded baker forgot to bake with the carrots and raisins.
Instead of simply trying to frost it at room temperature, wrap the layers in plastic and put them in the refrigerator for at least a couple of hours or even overnight. In fact, the layers can be kept in the refrigerator for up to a week if you need to space out your cake baking project.
Another story tells of a dim sum chef's wife creating a pastry with wintermelon paste influenced by a recipe from her mother's family. The new pastry was found to taste better than the dim sums that were being sold in teahouses, and the chef proudly told everyone it was made by his wife, hence it was named "Wife Cake".
Don't get caught in the trap of thinking that you must bake from scratch if you sell cakes. Most bakeries do NOT bake from scratch. In fact, I once worked at a bakery that actually claimed to be a “scratch bakery”, but all their cakes started with a Duncan Hines cake mix, the same kind you buy in the grocery store.
Cream cheese frosting should always be stored in the refrigerator. Cream cheese is a perishable food, and per FoodSafety.gov, perishable foods should not sit in room temperatures for longer than two hours.
On their own, boxed cake mixes have a structure that's loose and airy. But if you add ¼ cup flour or half a box of instant pudding mix, the texture of the cake becomes denser and tighter, ideal for a pound-cake-like consistency that will hold the shape of a Bundt pan.
If the nectar becomes cloudy before you even put the feeder out, it may just be air bubbles in the water. Let it sit on the counter for 15 minutes. If it is air in the water, the cloudiness will clear up by then. The cloudiness also could be caused by the sugar not dissolving.
When it's time to treat herself, McGrady revealed that all the Queen wants is a piece of chocolate biscuit cake. The cake is reportedly made in-house (or, more appropriately, in-palace), and Her Majesty consumes one slice per day.
The duch*ess cake, also known as the "Swedish Princess Cake" is a pastry classic. Made with light lemon chiffon cake, vanilla bean pastry cream, home made raspberry jam, vanilla bean whipped cream and finished off in the classic dome shape, covered in marzipan.
A princess cake (prinsesstårta in Swedish) is a traditional Swedish layer cake consisting of alternating layers of airy sponge cake, raspberry or strawberry jam, pastry cream, and a thick-domed layer of whipped cream. This is topped by marzipan, giving the cake a smooth rounded top.
Wholemeal flour is more coarse than regular flour and also absorbs more moisture, so using it instead of all purpose flour in a recipe can result in a dry cake. An example of where reducing an ingredient can result in a dry cake is when less sugar is used than what is called for in the recipe.
A dry cake is usually the result of one of the following pitfalls: using the wrong ingredients, making mistakes while measuring or mixing the batter, or baking the cake too long or at too high a temperature. Once you understand which common cake-baking blunders to avoid, you'll know how to bake a moist cake every time.
The ratio of wet to dry ingredients determines a cake's moisture level. If there's simply too much flour and not enough butter, a cake will taste dry. On the other hand, if there's too much milk and not enough flour, a cake will taste too wet. Finding the right balance between wet and dry ingredients is key.
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Introduction: My name is Foster Heidenreich CPA, I am a delightful, quaint, glorious, quaint, faithful, enchanting, fine person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.
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