What better way than to get back into baking than by participating in the January edition of the Sweet Adventures Blog Hop! The theme for this month is Tropical Paradise, which suited me perfectly as I am now living in the tropical paradise of Cairns, in Far North Queensland – home of the Great Barrier Reef, Daintree Rainforest and many beautiful beaches.
Ingredients for a Tropical Dessert
When I think of tropical desserts, the first ingredients that come to mind are always coconut and mango – two of my favourite ingredients that I tend to use far too much – since my trip to Thailand, I can’t get enough of Mango Sticky Rice!. I assumed that coconut and mango would be foremost in other bloggers’ minds also, so I decided to use some other members of the tropical fruit family – bananas (which are grown absolutely everywhere up here), pineapple and passionfruit (which I have had a bountiful supply of over the past few months thanks to the enormous vine growing along my fence). When I came across this recipe for Hummingbird Cake, it fit the bill for the blog hop perfectly – all of the delicious fruits in it tick the tropical box and I think it makes a refreshing Summer dessert. Be warned though, it is definitely hard to stop at one….
Freshly baked hummingbird cakes
The recipe is very straightforward – a little bit of sifting, whisking and folding and the cake is practically made. I added a little more pineapple as I tend to like things on the sweeter side, and I used a combination of walnuts and pecans – they add the perfect crunch to this cake, without being too hard on my braced up teeth. When it came to making the icing, I was down to my last passionfruit on the vine, so I also used some of the tinned passionfruit syrup that I had on hand. The icing on these cakes is so simple (Philadelphia cream cheese, icing sugar, butter and passionfruit) but it tastes amazing – I can’t get enough of cream cheese at the moment and I would happily have eaten the bowl of icing on its own. The creamy icing is the perfect partner for the light, fruity cake – I really need to use more cream cheese in my baking!
Using my beautiful new cake display
I received a late Christmas present yesterday from my Pilot’s Mother & Partner (hereby known as The Educators) – a beautiful antique silver tea set and the delicately pretty silver cake display above! The cake display was perfect for showing off my hummingbird cakes and it will be making many more appearances on Baking Myself Happy! I really was quite spoiled at Christmas, I’m a very lucky girl. The tea set and my other new additions to the kitchen will be featuring in future posts – stay tuned.
Hummingbird Cake
If you haven’t entered my giveaway to win an awesome Personal Planner, there is still time! Click here to enter – good luck! And be sure to check out all of this months blog hop entries below xx
- 1½ cups plain flour
- ½ tsp bicarbonate of soda
- 1 tsp cinnamon
- 1 cup sugar
- 2 eggs
- ½ cup canola oil
- 1 tsp vanilla essence
- ½ cup tinned crushed pineapple in juice, undrained
- 2 medium mashed or sliced bananas
- ½ cup walnuts or pecans, roughly chopped (optional)
- Icing
- 250g cream cheese
- 125g butter
- 300g icing sugar
- 2 passionfruit
- Preheat oven to 180C.
- Butter and line a round, 17-centimetre cake tin or two 16-centimetre, fluted brioche tins.
- Sift flour, bicarbonate and cinnamon into a large bowl, add sugar and stir.
- Whisk eggs with oil and vanilla, then add to flour mixture and gently mix.
- Fold through pineapple, bananas and nuts.
- Pour into cake tin and bake for about 70 minutes (60 minutes for brioche tins) or until cooked when tested with a skewer.
- Remove from oven and cool.
- For icing, beat cream cheese, butter and icing sugar until creamy and smooth.
- Scoop out the pulp of the passionfruit and fold through icing.
- Spread over cake.
Oh I love cream cheese too! Its perfect in pretty much everything. These look soooo good! Thanks for joining the hop
So glad someone made a Hummingbird Cake for the hop – it’s one of my faves!
How pretty! I need to try this as I am on a passion fruit binge right now!!!
I’ve heard so much about hummingbird cake but never tried it yet! Thanks for sharing this tropical treat! xx
And you’re BACK!!
Looks amazing. 
What could be better than Hummingbird cake and passionfruit with icing. Not much I think. Luck you having a vine on the back fence
These are gorgeous! I like the sound of all the fruit in these cakes. I’m bookmarking these to try, the recipe looks like it should be fairly easy to make a vegan version of!
This looks delicious! Can you believe I have never made a Hummingbird cake before? Soon!
That silver cake stand is just beautiful! Great classic recipe too!
Delicious! I loooooove hummingbird cake and the passionfruit just adds to the deliciousness.
i have friend who makes the most amazign hummingbird cakes. so moist and sweet. i never think to give them a go. yours look amazing. i must make them one day! perhaps in the winter time, to bring a little tropical summer into the kitchen
Yum these look so good and yes cream cheese icing is the best with any cake really
WOW! This looks mouthwateringly delicious!! YUM
This looks delicious1
I’ve noticed you love coconut as much as me!! Have you ever used coconut oil as a substitute for vegetable or canola oil in your baking? I tried making vanilla whoopie pies with coconut oil last week and they seemed to turn out fine (with a subtle coconut flavour) x
Hey there! Someone in my Facebook group shared
this site with us so I came to give it a look. I’m definitely enjoying the information. I’m bookmarking and will be tweeting this to my
followers! Fantastic blog and superb style and design.
Thank you a lot for sharing this with all folks you really know what you’re speaking approximately! Bookmarked. Kindly also consult with my web site =). We could have a hyperlink exchange agreement among us