The Cake Slice Bakers are posting this weekend and the June Cake choices included a lovely blueberry coffee cake, a decadent caramel layer cake, a pretty pink lemonade cake, and my choice, the Celebration Hummingbird Cake. I've never made a Hummingbird Cake before. No one seems to know the origin of the name, but it has been a highly requested recipe from Southern Living Magazine for over 30 years. The recipe itself comes from the Southern Living Cake Book and to make it very celebratory they used Browned Butter Frosting and a Cream Cheese Custard filling, plus piping the icing in a basket weave for the cookbook photo. Not being in a crafty mood, I simplified my version.
The hummingbird cake is very moist because it has crushed pineapple and ripe bananas, along with the usual cake ingredients. It has just a touch of cinnamon and some crunch from toasted pecans. I only made one change to the cake part by substituting a stick of melted, browned butter for 1/2 cup of the oil. For the icing and filling of this delicious, decadent layer cake, I substituted my favorite cream cheese frosting. It has the cream cheese of the called for in the filling and I already used browned butter in the cake, so it's OK it's not in the frosting. The recipe for this wonderful cream cheese frosting is from a good friend and it is over 30 years old, too, so the timing is right. It is softer than the browned butter icing, has a small amount of sour cream which goes a long way to softening the super sweet effect you often get with confectioner's sugar icings. Pretty easy to work with, too.
My smart daughter was here helping with the cake creation and she suggested sprinkling some rum over the cake layers right before icing them to carry out the Caribbean vibe. It was brilliant! you caught just a hint of rum in most bites and a big hit of banana and pineapple. The pecans not only add crunch, but hey looked pretty on the top as decoration. Even though I put waxed paper strips under the edges to keep the icing off the plate edge, it was so delightfully gooey that the icing left tracks where the paper had been as I pulled the paper out. Lori's Cream Cheese Icing the kind of icing that you could just stand over the bowl and eat it with a spoon. Too rich to do it for long though.
I suspect I will be asked to make this one again. We had some friends over and I never did get a morning light photo...the cake was totally gone before I could get a shot. The photos I did get were with night time light. Don't worry too much about how it looks...just make this cake! You'll be glad you did.
Be sure to visit the other Cake Slice Bakers posts to see which of the month's choices they made.
Great post, Elle! Hummingbird cake never appealed much until your post. How interesting that Southern Living originated the recipe. Plus with the touch of rum and your family frosting, I'm now wanting a slice of the luscious cake! Good thing I've got the Southern Cake Book, right?
ReplyDeleteHurray!! We covered all four cake recipes again! For me, it was either your cake or the pink lemonade, the pink lemonade won because it has the unusual (for me) ingredient - lemonade mix!
ReplyDeleteEmily
I originally chose this cake to bake too Elle but I didn't I kinda ran out of time and wanted a simpler bake. Also the fact that it had a cream cheese icing put me off as I always seem to have trouble with them. I may give this one of yours a go, it looks wonderful.
ReplyDelete