Hummingbird Cake

It's been a little while since I shared a recipe, isn't it.

The family of the Prep student I work with came for afternoon tea a couple of weeks ago. I knew I wanted to make a cake...but what to make. Dead bananas being my inspiration, I went in search of a recipe to melt the hearts of hungry 'savages'. I happened, also, to have a tin of crushed pineapple and so Hummingbird Cake became our afternoon tea. Banana cake is ok but Hummingbird Cake is absolutely the way to go! It is so easy to put together ~ no creaming of butter and sugar, just throw it together, mix and bake.

Hummingbird Cake

1 1/2 cups plain flour
1 cup castor sugar
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate soda
3 eggs, lightly beaten
3/4 cup oil
3/4 cup chopped pecans or walnuts
2 cups mashed over-ripe bananas
1/2 cup undrained crushed pineapple (tinned)
Cream Cheese Frosting
60g packaged cream cheese, softened
30g butter
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
1 1/2 cups icing sugar

1. Preheat oven to 180C/350F.
   
2. Lightly grease 23cm square slap pan, line base with paper, grease paper.
3. Sift flour, sugar, cinnamon and soda into large bowl. Stir in eggs, oil, nuts, banana and pineapple; stir until just combined. Pour mixture into prepared pan and bake in moderate oven for about 1 hour.
4. Stand cake 10 minutes before turning onto wire rack to cool.

Cream Cheese Frosting:

1. Beat cream cheese, cutter and essence in small bowl with electric mixer until light and fluffy; gradually beat in sifted icing sugar.
   

1. Spread cold cake with cream cheese frosting.

Of course, you know I've made some slight alterations! I omitted the nuts, because Miss Sunshine is allergic to them. I also substituted the flour with gluten free flour ~ a mix of plain and self raising because I had run out of the plain! And just because, like me, you'll want to know....2 cups of mashed banana is about 4 regular sized bananas. I don't have a 23cm square cake tin, so I used a 23cm round springform tin. It was just fine but you will need the extra 3cm as the mixture is larger in volume than a regular cake batter is.

I have some bananas set aside in readiness for this recipe. Next time I'll try making it into muffins and baking for about 20 minutes. I'll try to remember to take pictures to share!