Hummingbird cake is a moist, lightly spiced cake made with bananas, pineapple, and chopped pecans, and it's covered with a simple cream cheese frosting and a light pineapple filling. It's always a huge hit!
Grease four 6-inch cake pans with baking spray (this works really well, but you can also grease and flour them very well), and set aside.
In a medium mixing bowl, sift together the flour, sugar, salt, baking soda, and cinnamon
Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients and add the eggs, melted butter, vanilla, pineapple, bananas, and pecans. Mix together until combined.
Divide the batter evenly among the prepared baking pans and place in the hot oven.
Bake for 40 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean or when you lightly press on the cake, and it springs back. If touching it leaves an indent, bake it a few minutes longer.
Allow the cakes to cool on a wire rack for 5 minutes before carefully removing from the pan. I like to place a cooling rack on top of my slightly cooled cake and then flip it over so that the rack is now on the bottom; then remove the pan and allow the cake to continue to cool on the rack.
While the cake is cooking, beat together the cream cheese and butter until smooth.
Add powdered sugar and mix until smooth.
Add vanilla and mix.
Remove one cup of frosting and place it in a separate bowl. Add the crushed pineapple to the reserved frosting and stir to combine well.
To Assemble:
When the cake is completely cool, place one layer in the center of the serving plate or cake stand.
Pipe thick line of frosting around the edge of the first layer.
Fill inside the piped line with 1/3 of the pineapple frosting mixture and spread it out evenly.
Top with next layer, and repeat until all of the layers are used.
Once assembled, frost cake with thin layer of frosting, it's ok if it has a rustic look to it. This is considered a "naked cake" whic,h means the icing is on the thin side and it's ok to see the imperfections and a bit of cake through the frosting. It's a very pretty look.
Use the extra frosting to pipe swirls on the top of the cake.
Decorate with dehydrated pineapple flowers, banana chips, and candied pecans. Use the photos in the blog post for inspiration.
Video
Notes
You can also use three 9-inch baking pans for this recipe. They'll need to cook for about 30 minutes.
You can make your own dried pineapple flowers by removing the outside of a fresh pineapple and then slicing it 1/4 inch thick. (Don't remove the core.) Place sliced pineapple in the oven and dehydrate on the lowest setting until it feels like leather or jerky. You can also buy them at Trader Joe's.
When using salted butter, usually you will want to decrease the salt called for in a recipe just a bit.
I like to use overripe bananas because it gives a lot of great flavor to this cake recipe.