Hummingbird Cake
Good Morning and Happy Tuesday to you!
We are back home now after a fun week visiting my family in Connecticut. On Saturday when we reenacted Christmas for my brother and his fiancé, we also celebrated my brother’s birthday. He is a Christmas baby. Actually, both of my brothers are holiday babies, John was born on Christmas and Pat on Thanksgiving. I was born on Columbus Day, so if you want to get technical I am a holiday baby too 🙂 .
For his birthday dinner, John chose to make Cioppino, a tomato based seafood stew. He made it with my mom and they used mussels, shrimp, cod and crab. You really can use any kind of seafood you like though. During dinner John shared what he heard about the history of the dish. The story goes, that the stew was developed in the late 1800s by Italian fisherman who had settled in San Francisco seaports. At the end of the day one of the men would come around yelling “chip in” and the other fishermen would “chip in” their seafood scraps so they could all share a seafood stew for dinner. Since they were Italian, their accent made “Chip-in” sounded more like “Cioppino”. Whether or not this is true we are not sure, but it is a cute story to pair with a delicious soup!
(pairs well with sour dough bread and a glass of red wine)
For dessert, I made a humming bird cake with cream cheese frosting. It reminds me of a carrot cake, except that bananas take the place of the carrots, which makes it sweeter and moister. It is very simple to make:
(combine dry ingredients)
(add wet ingredients, pineapple, bananas and pecans)
(bake for 25-30 minutes)
(cool, frost and enjoy!)
Hummingbird Cake
Ingredients
Cake
- 3 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 2 cups sugar
- 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 3 large eggs, beaten
- 1 cup vegetable oil
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 1 (8-ounce) can crushed pineapple, undrained
- 2 large bananas, chopped
- 1 cup pecans, chopped
Cream Cheese Frosting
- 1 package cream cheese (8oz), softened
- 1 stick butter (1/2 cup), softened
- 2 cups confectioners sugar
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Instructions
Cake
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees
- In a large bowl, mix together dry ingredients (flour, baking soda, salt, sugar, cinnamon)
- In a small bowl, whisk together eggs
- Add eggs, vegetable oil and vanilla to dry ingredients and mix until just combined
- Fold in pineapple, bananas and pecans
- Pour batter into 2 greased and floured 8 inch cake pans
- Bake for 25-30 minutes or until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean
- Cool completely before frosting.
Cream Cheese Frosting
- Using an electric mixer, beat cream cheese and butter on high until smooth
- Slowly add confectioners sugar until frosting thickens and forms a peak
- Add vanilla, mix until combined
(because of the bananas and cream cheese frosting you can also get away with eating it for breakfast 🙂 )
