I love this cake for its ease of making, it freezes and is good with or without a glaze or frosting (to keep the calorie content down in case you are worried about such things but I find the cake very sweet without any added glaze or icing). It is similar in texture to a carrot or passion cake and the banana and pineapple keep the cake lovely and moist and the walnuts add some crunch and texture. In fact you could almost say it is a healthy cake - all that fibre, fruit and protein and even the "fat" element is sunflower oil .... need I say more to convince you to give this a go?!
Hummingbird Cake
Ingredients
3 cups plain flour
2 cups caster sugar (you could use golden caster)
1 tsp Bi-carb of soda
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt
1 x 225g crushed pineapple, in natural juice
1 cup sunflower oil (or other neutral tasting oil)
3 large eggs, beaten
3 medium bananas, mashed roughly with a fork (roughly 270g)
1 cup small walnut pieces
1/2 tsp vanilla extract (not vanilla flavoured essence)
Optional Glaze
1 tbs unsalted butter, melted
1 cup icing sugar, sifted
2 tbs of the juice from the canned pineapple
Optional Cream Cheese Frosting
600g icing sugar, sifted
100g unsalted butter, at room temperature
250g cream cheese
Method
- Preheat oven to 325F / 160C / Gas Mark 3.
- Generously grease or oil a 10" tube or a fluted tube pan. You can use a normal square tin but I find that means the cake takes longer to cook properly in the middle.
- For the cake: in a large mixing bowl, stir together the flour, sugar, cinnamon, bi-carb of soda, and salt.
- Next remove 2 tbs of juice from the can of pineapple and set this juice aside for the glaze if using.
- Do not add the wet ingredients to the dry until you are ready to add them all at once, I find it easiest to prepare all the wet ingredients and have them all ready to just tip into the flour mixture.
- To the flour mixture, add the can of pinapple, including the juice, the oil, beaten eggs, mashed banana, nuts, and vanilla. Fold and stir together till just blended but do not beat.
- Pour the batter into the prepared pan.
- Bake for about 1 hour and 10 minutes or until a wooden toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean.
- Cool in the pan for 15 minutes then invert the cake onto a wire rack and remove the pan from the cake.
- Cool completely.
You can make a glaze or a cream cheese frosting, like the type you often get on carrot / passion cake. I rarely bother with this step as I like the cake as it is but the choice is, of course, yours!
To make the optional glaze:
In a small bowl combine the melted butter with the icing sugar. Add enough of the reserved pineapple juice to make a glaze of drizzling consistancy. Drizzle the glaze over the cooled cake.
For a glaze with a whole new dimension, try substituting rum for the pinapple juice.
To make the optional cream cheese frosting:
Beat the icing sugar and butter together with an electric whisk until the mixture comes together and is well mixed. Add the cream cheese in one go and beat till completely incorporated. Continue to beat at a medium to high speed until the mix is fluffy and light, at least 5 mins. Split the cake through the middle horizontally and spread some of the frosting into this middle layer and use the remainder to frost the top and sides of the cake if desired.
This is an adaptation of a recipe I originally found on Big Oven, recipe ID 158449. The image of the glazed cake is from this website as well. The images below are my cake cooling.
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| Looks like the mice have been at the cake but was my fault for being impatient and being a bit gung-ho getting the cake turned out from its tin! |
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| Hummingbird cake straight after being turned out, leaving to cool thoroughly before optional glaze or frosting. |
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