I recently made a huge and delicious cake using my Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook that my best friend got me for my birthday. I really recommend this cookbook if you like cakes and buns of any variety - it is packed full of recipes which all look and sound delicious! I have got my eye on the Marshmallow Cupcakes next.
Andrew and I decided to attempt the Hummingbird Cake which basically has the same principals of carrot cake but instead of carrots you use bananas, pineapple and walnuts. We wanted to do a triple layer like in the book but our first two layers turned out quite high so we stuck with two. We could have done another but it seriously would have been the highest cake ever.
It was surprisingly quite easy to make. We had to go shopping for some of the ingredients like the Bicarbonate of Soda and the pineapple and walnuts, but we had lots of the main ingredients already. We laid everything out on the work surface and then worked our way through the instructions which were really clear and easy to follow. The bananas had to be mashed but the pineapple and walnuts were kept as small pieces so they made the mixture chunky and more interesting!
We made the frosting from scratch using the Hummingbird cream cheese frosting recipe and used lashings of it to fill the middle of the cake and to decorate the outside. We had loads left over which we ate like small children and then felt a little overloaded on sugar. We used the leftover walnuts to decorate the top and then a light dusting of cinnamon powder finished it all off.
It was so so delicious! It tasted better than anything I've ever bought from a shop and it was really moist and tasty. The mixture of the crunchy walnuts with the chunks of pineapple made it really interesting and the frosting tasted really good; much nicer than the ready-made stuff you can buy. We shared some of the cake with other people but we still had loads for ourselves which was great but not so good for the waistline. I would definitely make this again as it was yummy (and for a rubbish cook like me it was quite easy!)
Oh and here's the mess that Andrew made after he had whisked the icing sugar with the other ingredients. I had to clean this up! :( How did the tv remote get there!? I have no idea. The only downside to baking is the tidying up afterwards isn't it?
Andrew and I decided to attempt the Hummingbird Cake which basically has the same principals of carrot cake but instead of carrots you use bananas, pineapple and walnuts. We wanted to do a triple layer like in the book but our first two layers turned out quite high so we stuck with two. We could have done another but it seriously would have been the highest cake ever.
It was surprisingly quite easy to make. We had to go shopping for some of the ingredients like the Bicarbonate of Soda and the pineapple and walnuts, but we had lots of the main ingredients already. We laid everything out on the work surface and then worked our way through the instructions which were really clear and easy to follow. The bananas had to be mashed but the pineapple and walnuts were kept as small pieces so they made the mixture chunky and more interesting!
We made the frosting from scratch using the Hummingbird cream cheese frosting recipe and used lashings of it to fill the middle of the cake and to decorate the outside. We had loads left over which we ate like small children and then felt a little overloaded on sugar. We used the leftover walnuts to decorate the top and then a light dusting of cinnamon powder finished it all off.
And here is the finished result!
It was so so delicious! It tasted better than anything I've ever bought from a shop and it was really moist and tasty. The mixture of the crunchy walnuts with the chunks of pineapple made it really interesting and the frosting tasted really good; much nicer than the ready-made stuff you can buy. We shared some of the cake with other people but we still had loads for ourselves which was great but not so good for the waistline. I would definitely make this again as it was yummy (and for a rubbish cook like me it was quite easy!)
Oh and here's the mess that Andrew made after he had whisked the icing sugar with the other ingredients. I had to clean this up! :( How did the tv remote get there!? I have no idea. The only downside to baking is the tidying up afterwards isn't it?
Grrrrr.
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