Spiced banana and pineapple cake with delicious cream cheese frosting. Reminds me of a tropical banana bread!
Hummingbird Cake
4
servings30
minutes40
minutes300
kcalIngredients
3 cups flour
1 ½ tsp baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon
¼ tsp allspice
¼ tsp cardamom, optional
¼ tsp cloves
¼ tsp nutmeg
1 ¼ tsp kosher salt (half as much if using fine salt)
1 cup oil
½ cup sour cream
3 eggs
1 tbsp vanilla
2 cups ripe mashed bananas
1 cup crushed pineapple (undrained)
1 cup white sugar
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup pecan pieces, toasted (dust them with a little bit of your flour mixture, this way they don’t sink to the bottom)
- Additional Ingredients:
1 cup pecan halves, optional, for garnish
- For the Frosting:
2 8 oz blocks of cream cheese, softened
1 stick butter, at room temperature, unsalted (that’s one stick)
1 tsp vanilla
¼ tsp salt
1 (16 oz) package powdered sugar, and more as needed, like up to 1 ½ packages
Directions
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
- Grease and line the bottoms of 2 8 or 9” round pans with parchment paper.
- Measure flour by spooning it gently into your cups measure and leveling off with a butter knife without compressing the flour and add to a small bowl. Add baking soda and spices to flour and mix it in.
- Whisk sugar, oil, and kosher salt well. Add sour cream, vanilla, pineapple, and bananas, and mix well. Add eggs, one at a time, mixing after each addition. Don’t beat too hard after you added the eggs as you don’t want too much air incorporated.
- Sift your flour mixture into your banana mixture and finish folding the flour well, yet gently, with a flexible rubber spatula. Add pecans while you are working on incorporating your flour into the batter. You don’t want to overmix as it will be tough and not light and fluffy, but you don’t want chunks of flour either.
- Divide the batter between two prepared pans.
- Bake for around 50-60 minutes. 55 minutes worked perfectly for me. Start checking after 50 minutes and remove from the oven when the cake passes the toothpick test (toothpick inserted in the center comes out with a few moist crumbs, but not better.)
- Allow to cool in the pan for 10 minutes then run a butter knife around the edges. Invert the cake out of the pan and cool completely on wire racks.
- For the frosting: beat cream cheese and butter until smooth. Gradually add powdered sugar in batches, beating on medium-low speed after each addition. Stir in vanilla and salt. Add more sugar as needed. Once the desired frosting consistency is reached, beat on medium-high for 2-3 minutes until fluffy. Garnish with pecan halves, if desired.
- Frost the completely cooled cake, and allow it to chill in the fridge to set, serve and enjoy!
