Hummingbird Cake

After taking a little bit of a break from the Secret Recipe Club I’m back in action this month and was really excited about my assigned blog Good Thymes and Good Food!  After scrolling through the recipes on very numerous occasions I finally settled on a recipe for Hummingbird Cake.  This cake is light and sweet and made with bananas, coconut and crushed pineapple.  It’s delicious! It’s believed that the name Hummingbird cake came about because hummingbirds are attracted to very sweet things.

The original recipe calls for nuts which I opted to leave out.  I don’t love nuts inside of cakes and I didn’t have any anyways 🙂  I also cut the frosting recipe in half and I still had just enough to “messy” frost the cake.

Hummingbird Cake makes 1-two tiered 9″ cake

• 3 cups plain flour, plus more for pans
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
•  1/2 tsp salt
• 1 cup vegetable oil
•  2 tsp vanilla extract
•  2 cups sugar
• 3 large eggs
•  2 cups mashed ripe bananas (about 3 large)
•  1 can (8 ounces) crushed pineapple, drained
•  1 cup chopped walnuts or pecans *optional
• 1 cup shredded coconut (you can use either sweetened or unsweetened, I used sweetened)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and grease 2-9″pans with shortening or line with parchment paper.

In the bowl of a mixer, beat vegetable oil with sugar and vanilla for about 2 minutes.

Add the eggs one at a time mixing well between each addition. Mix until pale yellow and fluffy.

Add the mashed bananas, crushed pineapple and coconut.

In another bowl, whisk together the flour with the baking soda, cinnamon and salt.

Mix the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients until combined and divide the batter amongst the pans.

Bake in the centre oven rack for 30-45 minutes, or until the cake is golden brown and springs back when lightly touched in the centre.

Cool cakes for 15 minutes in the pans on wire racks.

Carefully invert pans to remove cakes and let cool completely on wire racks.

Cream Cheese Frosting (I only used a little less than half of this recipe)

• 2 cups (16 0z room temperature cream cheese
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 cup unsalted butter at room temperature
• 8 cups of powdered sugar

Beat the butter and cream cheese together until smooth.  Beat in vanilla followed by the sugar continuing to beat until smooth.

Place the first cake on your serving plate upside down and spread about 1/3rd of the cream cheese frosting over the top.  Stack the second cake on top and frost top and sides with remaining frosting.

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                                                                                                                               Enjoy!