This classic Hummingbird Cake is soft, moist and tender with the perfect amount of bananas, pineapples and pecans. I layer it with my Favorite Cream Cheese Buttercream and decorate it with a mosaic of dried fruit and nuts.
I feel like this magnificent cake always plays second fiddle to Carrot Cake. But she deserves a shining spotlight of her own! The bananas and pineapple of hummingbird cake give it a tropical vibe that is pulled back to the South by the crunchy pecans and generous amount of cream cheese buttercream.
Have you noticed that all hummingbird cakes have the perfunctory crushed pecan garnish? This seemed to lack the pizazz that she was due. So I created a fun mosaic pattern out of dried pineapples, dehydrated pineapple slices, banana chips and pecans.
Why do we call it a 'Hummingbird Cake'?
This cake was first created in Jamaica, where significantly, the national bird is the scissors-tail hummingbird. Locals call this the Doctor Bird cake, which is their nickname for this particular type of fine feathered friend.
Ten years after a 1968 export from Jamaica's Tourist Board of local Jamaican recipes (including this dessert), Southern Living printed the hummingbird cake recipe.
It took flight! (Pun very much intended.) This cake became Southern Living's voters' favorite recipe in 1990. And you can be sure that included a bomb cream cheese frosting!
Speaking of cream cheese frosting, well besides hummingbird cake history lessons, it's one of my favorite topics. I rarely brag if I can help it (I guess I can't help it more often than I think! ) but the BEST cream cheese buttercream recipe lives on this blog! It has all the familiar tang of cream cheese buttercream plus one secret ingredient that makes it better than all the rest!
Plus it’s easy. We all need a dose of easy baking right about now. Just me?
Life has its ups and downs but cream cheese buttercream will always be awesome. Pair that with hummingbird cake? Match made in heaven.
Hummingbird Cake
Ingredients
- 3 cups All-Purpose Flour
- 1 teaspoon Cinnamon
- 1 teaspoon Baking soda
- ½ teaspoon Salt
- 3 Eggs
- 1 cup Vegetable oil
- ½ tablespoon Vanilla
- 2 cups Sugar
- 8 oz Pineapple (in their own juice)
- 3 Ripe Bananas
- ¾ cups Pecans (chopped and toasted)
- 1 Cream Cheese Buttercream
- Dried fruit and extra pecans for garnish (optional)
My Secret Recipe:
Instructions
- Spray and line two 8 or 9 inch round cake pans with parchment. Be sure to spray the sides of the pan. Preheat oven to 350°F
- Whisk together flour, cinnamon, soda and salt; set aside.
- Use a hand blender (immersion blender) or a regular blender to blend the pineapple and bananas together.
- In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, whisk the eggs until beaten.
- Whisk in the oil and vanilla until emulsified
- Whisk in the sugar followed by the pineapple banana mixture
- Fold in the flour mixture.
- Divide between the two prepared pans. Bake until cake tester or skewer comes out with only a few clinging crumbs but no wet batter streaks, approximately 25-30 minutes.
- Cool 10 minutes in the pans then turn out onto a cooling rack to cool completely.
Video Instructions
Notes
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