Hummingbird Cake Recipe

August 5, 2012

Recently a colleague of mine brought in Hummingbird Cupcakes for our workplace “Baking Club” event. In case you’re wondering, Baking Club is a club at my work for keen bakers (who would have thought?). Every now and then we bake up a storm, bring our treats into work, charge people a gold coin donation to eat the treats and then donate the money to a chosen charity. Anyone who is thinking that this sounds like a great idea, I totally agree with you. Sadly, it’s not an idea I can claim credit for though. I just go along with it and every now and then try to bake something that’s up to the standards of my baking master colleagues.

I can’t quite remember what the charity of choice was this particular time, but what I can remember is that the Hummingbird Cupcakes were amazing. (The fact that it’s called Hummingbird Cake makes me love it even more.)

I begged my colleague for the recipe so that I could bake it for my mother’s upcoming birthday. Okay, I didn’t have to beg. I asked her for it and she emailed it straight over.

The recipe she sent me was the recipe on this blog here.

I made my cake true to the recipe (i.e. a two-layered cake, rather than my colleague’s cupcake version) and I have to say, I’ve never been so proud.

The cake, if I do say so myself, turned out delicious.

I urge you to give The Cake Mistress’s recipe a go. It’s probably more of a morning tea cake rather than a dessert cake but the guests at my mother’s birthday dinner (i.e. my immediate family) certainly didn’t complain.

If you want to make my colleague’s cupcake version, all you have to do is pour the mixture into cupcake tins. I don’t know how long the cooking time is but I’m sure you’ll be able to figure it out (press down on the top – if it springs back it’s cooked. Or use one of those cake-tester stick things).

My colleague warned me that she had to whip her icing for 10 minutes to get it to the right consistency. So I was prepared to wait but lo and behold – my icing came together pretty much right away. It could have something to do with the fact that I used low fat cream cheese or that I had kept it out of the fridge for a bit before. Probably the latter.

The only other thing I can suggest is don’t chop your pineapple too small. I made the mistake of letting Boyfriend cut the pineapple into tiny pieces and it lacked the little bursts of moisture and flavour that my colleague’s cupcakes had.

Would I it bake again? Oh, yeah.