hummingbird cake with orange cream cheese icing

I remember "semi-naked" cakes being all the rage online about 10 years ago and the term felt too "hipster" for my liking. I'm a contrary sod so needless to say I did not jump on the bandwagon. Until last month, purely because I didn't make enough icing and couldn't be arsed to make more. I wonder if this is how the style started?

I've posted this hummingbird cake before (originally here) numerous times as it's a firm favourite for family birthdays but for a change I tried an orange and honey cream cheese icing. It was absolutely delicious; the orange complemented the spiced banana and pineapple flavours really nicely. I definitely want to use it again so have written it down below for reference.

Orange and honey cream cheese icing:

2oz softened butter

4oz icing sugar

6oz full fat cream cheese

Grated zest of an orange

1tsp runny honey 

Beat together the butter and icing sugar for 5 minutes until light and fluffy. Add the cream cheese, orange zest and honey and mix until fully combined.

Enough for a standard sandwich cake but recommend doubling the quantities for filling and fully covering a triple layer cake.

tropical banana bread

This has been declared my best banana loaf to date by my parents. High praise indeed, especially since I was merely trying to find a way to use up the rest of my pineapple not-quite-a-curd from the previous week. 

I've been favouring Mary Berry's plain banana loaf recipe for most of my banana bread variations this year. It's like the victoria sponge recipe of banana breads - ridiculously versatile. It also only leaves one bowl to wash at the end which gets a massive thumbs up from me. Hurray for laziness.

This cake has such a lovely soft, juicy crumb with a hint of added texture from the desiccated coconut as it's in the cake batter as well as the icing.

The icing is oh so luscious and smooth. Pineapple curd tastes so much better in cream cheese icing than ordinary butter icing. I loved the subtle, fruity flavour against the tangy cream cheese. It paired beautifully with the soft, spiced banana bread. Banana, coconut and pineapple most certainly create a summery dream team flavour combination.

It's a pity the weather isn't feeling more tropical or summery though. It's the end of June, why is it still cold?!

Tropical banana bread

Recipe adapted from Mary Berry's Baking Bible. I had 3 bananas to use up so I increased the ingredient amounts by half. It produced a huge loaf and a couple of muffins!

150g softened butter/margarine

260g soft light brown sugar

3 large eggs

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

1tsp ground cinnamon

3 bananas

325g self raising flour

25g desiccated coconut (plus extra to decorate)

1 level tsp baking powder

2 tbsp pineapple curd

1 tbsp milk

pineapple curd cream cheese icing

I wish I wrote down what I did at the time. I think it was this:

50g softened butter

75g cream cheese icing

125-150g icing sugar

1 tbsp pineapple curd

Preheat the oven to 180C/Fan 160C/Gas 4 and line a 2lb loaf tin with baking parchment. Put all the ingredients in a large bowls and mix together for about 2 minutes until smooth and well combined. Pour the mixture into the prepared loaf tin. Pour any excess mixture into muffin cases and bake them for half the time.

Bake the loaf in the middle of the oven for roughly 1 hour until well risen, firm to touch and skewer inserted in the middle of the cake comes out clean. Leave to cool in the tin for 10 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to finish cooling.

For the icing, mix everything together until smooth. This makes quite a slack mixture (the curd was pretty runny) so feel free to add more icing sugar if you want it firmer. Spread the icing on top of the cooled cake and decorate with some toasted desiccated coconut.

coconut cupcakes - half with raspberry jam, half with (questionable) pineapple curd

Last week I was posessed with the idea of making summery pineapple curd to put inside coconut cupcakes. However there was a major flaw in my tropical plan: I'm a lazy low faff baker.

All the pineapple curd recipes I came across online only used egg yolks and I cannot be arsed with recipes which only use half the egg. (Now you know why I rarely make meringues!) The number of times I've set aside the other half of the egg with the best of intentions to bake something with it, only to eventually throw it away as I inevitably forget about it is annoying. And wasteful.

So I set about inventing a pineapple curd recipe loosely based on a few whole egg curd recipes. The resulting curd tastes lovely and is a glorious sunshine yellow but is sadly more like a grainy, runny sauce than a curd. I decided against putting it inside the cupcakes but mixed a few teaspoonfuls into the icing and have eaten some drizzled on top of a cupcake. It definitely adds to the overall flavour of the cupcake, but I'm kicking myself for not following an actual pineapple curd recipe.

Without the curd I find the cupcake a bit "meh". Coconut is a funny flavour for me. I think it's a subtle, secondary element or an additional texture. It needs to be paired with a strong flavour such as pineapple, raspberry, lime or chocolate to bring it to life.

Following the disappointment of my pineapple not-quite-a curd I split my coconut cupcake batch to produce a raspberry and coconut combination too. For these I put raspberry jam in the centre and whipped a few teaspoonfuls into the butter icing. I've seen a few people mix jam into icing but have never tried it myself. It is so tasty, why haven't I done this before?! Move over malt chocolate icing, this is my new obsession.

The girly girl in me is filled with glee by eating something which looks so pink and fluffy. The bright jammy centre just adds to the girly excitement. I had forgotten how much I enjoyed raspberry and coconut as a pairing.

Unsurprisingly the raspberry batch are the winners for me. However had the curd worked I think these would have been pretty special too as pineapple and coconut is such a fresh and summery flavour combination. I'll just have to suck it up one day and make a pineapple curd using only egg yolks!

Coconut cupcakes - half with raspberry jam, half with pineapple curd

6oz/ 170g margarine/ butter

6oz/ 170g caster sugar

3 large eggs

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

5oz/ 140g self raising flour

1oz/ 30g desiccated coconut (plus extra to top the cupcakes at the end)

2 tablespoons of milk 

filling:

1 jar raspberry jam

1 jar pineapple curd - I won't write what I did as it didn't particularly work but you can find a few different pineapple curd recipes here, here or here.

  
butter icing (covers both batches):

150g softened butter

300g icing sugar

2-3 teaspoons of raspberry jam/pineapple curd (add to taste)

Preheat the oven to 180C/160 Fan/Gas 4 and line a couple of cupcake trays with cases. In a small bowl, soak the desiccated coconut in the milk. Whilst that's soaking, beat together the margarine and sugar in a large bowl for about 5 minutes until light and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well between each addition. Add a tablespoon of the flour mixture with the last egg to stop the cake mixture from curdling. Tip in the milky coconut, vanilla extract and remaining flour and mix until everything is fully combined. 
 

Divide the mixture between the cupcake cases (I think I got 16 from the mixture) and bake in the centre of the oven for about 30 minutes until the cupcakes are light golden in colour, well risen, and spring back when touched. Leave to cool in the tins for a couple of minutes before turning out onto a wire rack to finish cooling. 

For the icing, beat together the butter and icing sugar for about 5 minutes until light and fluffy. Split the icing in half, adding a few teaspoons of raspberry jam to one batch and curd to the other. Mix both icings thoroughly.

Using a sharp knife, cut a circular disc from the top of each cupcake and pop a teaspoonful of jam or curd inside and replace the top. Spread or pipe the icing on top and liberally cover with (toasted) desiccated coconut.

banana, coconut and pineapple bundt

Ah, Monsieur Swirly Bundt-Tin. We meet again....

Except this time I'm armed with cake release spray. In your face previous failed bundt attempts!

Admittedly this bundt is still a bit on the rustic side, but it did come out all in one piece which made me do a little happy dance.

After making banana and coconut muffins a few weeks ago I've had the flavour combination stuck in my mind. I knew I wanted to revisit it and add pineapple to the party. After some online searches I stumbled across this bundt recipe which appealed to me as the dessicated coconut is soaked in milk before adding to the mixture. Other than swapping the milk for coconut milk and adding pineapple chunks I more or less stuck to the recipe.

The recipe made a lot of batter, so much batter that I nearly filled a 2lb loaf tin in addition to the bundt tin. I was worried about the mixture overflowing so I stopped filling an inch or so from the top. The cake didn't rise as much as I expected though, if anything it seemed to sink slightly after coming out the oven, so I probably could have added more mixture to make the finished bundt more impressive in size.

I'm guessing the extra moisture from the pineapple chunks may have contributed to the lack of rise and somewhat soggy/dense/undercooked-looking texture. That or perhaps more bicarbonate of soda/baking powder is needed to give more rise for this size of banana cake. And maybe there's just too much milk in general. I don't know, I'm not good with the science-y aspect of baking so any thoughts are welcome.

Back to the texture, it reminded me of this cake I baked a couple of summers ago which was also packed with liquid/fruit and sank despite being fully cooked. Although this bundt used coconut milk instead of yoghurt, it has a similarly creamy flavour and texture. The cake might look a bit sorry for itself but the flavours are all good.  It would certainly work well as a pudding served with custard. Yes, I still think about comforting, hot custard in July.

Banana, coconut and pineapple bundt

An adapted recipe. It needs more tweaking but this is what I used:

1 1/2 cups of dessicated coconut

300ml coconut milk (for soaking)

185g butter, softened

1 1/2 cups caster sugar

3 large eggs

150g fresh pineapple chunks, cut small

3 ripe/brown bananas, mashed

160ml milk (as I still had 100ml left from the can of coconut milk I used that with 60ml semi-skimmed milk)

1/2 tsp (at least) of vanilla extract

3 cups of self-raising flour

Preheat the oven to 180C/170C Fan/Gas 4. Soak the dessicated coconut in 300ml of coconut milk in a bowl for about an hour. Coat the bundt tin in cake release spray and a dusting of flour. Tap out any excess flour into the sink.

Beat together the butter and sugar for about 5 minutes until pale and fluffy (in a large bowl, as this is a big mixture.) Add the eggs one at a time, beating well between each addition. Mash the 3 bananas and add to the coconut milk mixture along with the pineapple chunks. Mix together then add to the butter and sugar mixture. Mix everything together. Add the flour and milk alternately, mixing well between each addition. Once everything is combined spoon it into the bundt tin. Fill until you're about an inch from the top so you don't run the risk of overflowing. Use the remaining mixture to fill some cupcake/muffin cases or a loaf tin. Bake for about an hour until deep golden, firm to touch and the edges are coming away from the tin.

hummingbird layer cake

Posting two days in a row, what is this madness?!

It was my sister-in-law's birthday on Monday and I baked a triple layer hummingbird cake for the occasion.

I've been meaning to try out some new icing techniques this year so I decided to have a shot at this scalloped effect I've been spying on the cakey interwebz. After crumb coating the cake you pipe on a vertical row of dots and then drag your palette knife through each dot. Repeat this, slightly overlapping each vertical row, until you go full circle and have this funky pattern!   

For a first attempt which was done as quick as possible (I was pushed for time) I was quite impressed with the result. It's definitely a pattern I'll be using again on other cakes.

Did you know that you can ripen bananas quickly by putting them in the oven at a low heat for half an hour? I didn't! My bananas were still far too firm and yellow to bake with on the day so I did a quick online search and bingo - see here! Amazing! This has seriously opened up banana baking opportunities for me. No more waiting around if I have a craving for banana bread.

Back to the hummingbird cake, it was a success! Admittedly I've baked this cake before so I knew it would go down well with the family. It's fruity and juicy with a warm, cinnamon spice and a bit of crunch from the pecans. And who doesn't love a bit of cream cheese icing?! Some may argue it's the best part of a cake. As you can see we more or less demolished this cake in one sitting!

Hummingbird birthday cake

It was my Dad's birthday last Wednesday so I thought I'd try the Hummingbird Bakery's Hummingbird cake from their first book. I think this wins the award for fastest disappearing cake as there was none left to snack on the following day!

I loved the flavour of this cake: warm and fruity. Banana, cinnamon, pecan and pineapple make brilliant cake making buddies. It's similar to a carrot cake in terms of texture and spice, but the bananas and pineapple make it extra juicy.

 

And everybody loves a bit of cream cheese icing, you just can't go wrong with it. I must say that Bee whipped up a very smooth batch. She did an excellent job with her first triple layer cake.

 

We decided to really go for it and put 54 candles on the cake (no need to guess Dad's age!) It was an impressive blaze. Thankfully we didn't need to call the fire brigade.

 

This was a really nice sized triple layer cake and easy to cut. Triple layered without being ginormous! With previous layered cakes I've found that they can be unstable to cut and difficult to eat if they're really deep and high. I worried that these sponges hadn't risen enough but on cutting and tasting they were absolutely fine. It's definitely a recipe I'd be happy to use again. I wonder if it would work as a bundt...

 

I'm feeling too lazy to type out the recipe, but you can find it here through Ros, The More Than Occasional Baker. She also has a nut chopper!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

Now this is a bit of a "ta-da" moment for me as I have never made a fruit cake before! When I saw the recipe for a "Victorian Christmas Cake" in Mary Berry's Baking Bible, I knew I had to give it a go. Although Christmas isn't Christmas without a dark, fruit cake, I much prefer a lighter cake like this one. 

I enjoyed making a pattern on top of the cake.

I did not enjoy the amount of time it took to chop, clean, drain, dry the fruit and nuts. Cherries are very sticky.

If you're thinking "why does the cake look slightly pink?" it's because I glazed it with strawberry jam. Ideally I would have liked apricot jam but we didn't have any in the house. I'm sure strawberry will taste fine.

We also put up our tree at the weekend! Usually we buy a 5ft-6ft tree but Mum fell in love with a 7ft tree this year which only just fits in the living room. It is a beauty though.

I've been solely in charge of decorating the tree for the past few years now which is great. I like the mixture of decorations we have on our tree: some old, some new, wooden shop bought ones and handmade pieces from family.

I made the circular decoration at the top of this photo. It's an old curtain ring wrapped with crepe paper and christmassy twirly ribbons, a cheap but cute decoration. I have another Christmassy post coming up this week with more crafty decorations along with my fudge post. Mmmm fudge.