tropical hummingbird cake

tropical hummingbird cake

• 25 Aug 2014

Hi Every-one, I hope you all had lovely weekends. Saturday was another wet day here in Sydney and when it rained most of day, I thought this poor cake would be spending another week in the frosty depths of the deep freeze. I adapted and made this Pineapple Crush Cake recipe from Belinda Jeffrey's book, Mix and Bake, 3 weeks ago now. I ran out of time to decorate the cake and I was out of town last weekend, so it's been stored in the freezer since then. Yesterday I woke to sunshine so I took out the butter and cream cheese ready to make the passionfruit cream cheese icing.

When I looked through the pineapple crush cake recipe in 'Mix and Bake' it looked very much like a Hummingbird cake with some tropical elements added like the macadamia nuts. I added passionfruit to the cream cheese icing and adjusted the proportions a little to fit my special little spring form tin. As always if you double the ingredients it will make a 23 cm/9inch cake and the cooking time remains the same.

I decorated the cake with some macadamia nut brittle adapted from a recipe in the the Ottolenghi Cookbook and a few wisps of toasted shredded coconut.

When the rain stopped falling, I decided to take the cake outside for it's photo shoot and yes I did put the cake up on a pedestal. I have no idea where the pedestal came from but it's been a feature of our back yard for about 2 years now.

Here's the recipe for you.

Tropical Hummingbird Layer Cake, adapted from Belinda Jeffery’s Mix and Bake. 

Makes a 16 cm cake 

Ingredients 

¾ cup SR flour 

¼ cup Plain flour 

pinch salt 

½ teaspoon ground cinnamon 

pinch ground nutmeg 

25g roasted macadamias, coarsely chopped 

1 egg 

⅔ cup caster sugar 

½ cup vegetable oil 

½ teaspoon vanilla extract 

⅓ cup canned crushed pineapple in natural juice, undrained 

⅔ cup mashed banana 

Passionfruit Cream Cheese Icing 

60g softened unsalted butter, diced

125 g softened cream cheese, diced

2 teaspoons passionfruit juice 

2½ cups icing sugar mixture, sifted  

Optional - Macadamia Nut Topping 

75 g macadamia nuts, coarsely chopped 

50g caster sugar 

1 tbl water  

Method 

1) Preheat oven to 180ºC/350ºF. Grease and line the base of a 16cm round cake tin with baking paper. Lightly dust the tin with flour. 

2) Sift the flours, salt, cinnamon and nutmeg into a large bowl. Stir in the chopped macadamia nuts. 

3) In another bowl, beat the egg lightly with the sugar. Whisk in the oil and vanilla extract until well combined. Add the pineapple and mashed bananas and mix thoroughly. 

4) Pour the banana mixture into the flour mixture and stir them together to form a batter. If the batter is too thick, add a little more pineapple juice. 

5) Bake for 50 – 60 minutes or until a wooden skewer comes out clean. Cool the cake before turning out of the tin. 

6) To prepare the nut topping, scatter the nuts over a baking sheet and roast in the oven at 140ºC/275ºF for about 15 minutes or until golden. Remove from the oven and set aside. Line a baking tray with baking paper. Place the sugar and water in a saucepan with a thick base. Heat the sugar mixture gently until it turns into a golden-brown caramel. Do not stir the mixture at any stage or the toffee may crystallize. Carefully add the toasted nuts and mix gently with a wooden spoon. When most of the nuts are coated in caramel, pour them on to the lined tray and leave to set. Break bits off and chop them very roughly with a large knife.  

7) For icing, put all the ingredients into the bowl of a stand mixer. Using the whisk attachment beat the mixture until it becomes light and fluffy, 8-10 minutes. 

8) Using a serrated knife, halve the cooled cake horizontally. Sandwich the two cakes together with about a third of the icing. Spread the remaining icing on top of the cake. 

I decorated the cake with macadamia nut brittle and a tablespoon of toasted shredded coconut. If you like, you could just drizzle the iced cake with some passionfruit pulp.

The cake is really moist as it's studded with nuggets of pineapple, banana and macadamia but I found it a bit too sweet. I'm sure I'll be making it again so maybe next time I'd cut down the sugar just a little or ditch the the macadamia nut brittle. It's such a sunshiney cake though, I'm glad I could finally photograph it outdoors.

See you all again next week,

Jillian