Hummingbird Cakes became popular in the late 1970s and it’s a real classic cake of the southern states of the USA. It reminds me of Paula Deen and makes me want to say ya’ll. I promise I won’t try and rock Paula’s crazy hair do too!
Hummingbird Cake is typically a delicious combination of banana, pineapple spiced cake. Sometimes they have pecans, sometimes not. I chose to swap pecans for macadamias. The combination of pineapple, banana and macadamia takes back to the Hawaiian sunshine of our USA trip in 2012.
My Hummingbird Cake has a vanilla bean cream cheese icing and covered in toasted shredded coconut.
How do you make sure the coconut is evenly spread across the cake? I placed the cake on an airing rack and then put the rack inside a cookie sheet or tray with an edge. This set up will make sure the coconut that doesn’t stick to the cake will fall into the tray and not all over your kitchen bench! Scoop the toasted coconut into the palm of one hand and cup your hand against the side of the iced cake and press gently. A LOT of coconut will fall off the iced cake into the cookie sheet/tray, but you can simply re-scoop and press against cake again until even.
- 1 cup self raising flour
- 1 cup plain flour
- ½ teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
- ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 1 cup caster sugar
- ½ cup desiccated coconut
- ¾ cup vegetable oil
- 425g can of diced pineapple, drained and chopped roughly
- 2 ripe bananas, mashed
- 2 eggs, lightly beaten
- 1 teaspoon vanilla bean paste
- ½ cup whole macadamia nuts
- 60g unsalted butter, chopped into small pieces
- 125g light cream cheese
- ¼ teaspoon vanilla bean paste
- 2 and ½ cups icing sugar
- 2 cups shredded coconut, toasted
- Preheat oven to 180 degrees fan forced. Grease and line a 20cm round cake tin.
- Sift flours, bicarb and cinnamon into a large bowl. Stir in caster sugar and coconut.
- Lightly fold in oil, pineapple, banana, eggs, vanilla bean paste, and macadamias until combined. Make sure there aren’t any pockets of flour, but be careful not to over mix.
- Spoon mixture into cake tin and bake in the oven for 55 to 65 minutes or until cooked through.
- Cool cake in the tin for 10 minutes and then turn out onto wire rack to cool completely.
- Using an electric mixer, beat butter, cream cheese and vanilla bean until combined. Add icing sugar in stages and beat to combine until smooth.
- Spread the icing evenly over the top and sides of the cake.
- Sprinkle the toasted coconut on the top of the cake. To add coconut to the side of the cake, scoop coconut into palm of your hand and then cup the side of the cake and press coconut gently into icing.
