Hummingbird cake

I don’t remember the hows, whys or when I heard about this cake but it’s been buzzing around in my head for months. Hummingbird cake is or was popular in the south and supposedly is from Jamaica where the national bird is the hummingbird. Since the main ingredients are bananas and pineapple it could very well be a Caribbean cake.

It’s a carrot cake that uses bananas instead of carrots. Frozen (and defrosted) bananas at that, plus pineapple and pecans. It’s was pretty easy to make but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t an emotional wreck after I made it. Frosting a cake alone is a hideous nightmare. Making something I am unfamiliar with is never without its anxieties.

I think it was good. I am not the best judge of that sort of thing in times of heightened botheration.

It occurred to me later that I could have been serving it in my Caribbean-themed restaurant because I needed another heebie-jeebie-inducing activity to deal with in that alternate universe of disquietude.

If you like making cakes and you make carrot cake you should try this. It pretty much tastes the same and you don’t have to grate carrots, just freeze 5 super-ripe bananas. Essentially they turn into slop as soon as they’re defrosted. Recipe here. And I should say, after all the fuss and worry, it’s an easy cake to make and the frosting was perfect for the size of the cake (3 layers!!) and application turned out to be a breeze. And what I need to keep in mind but never seem to, is that I am making a cake for family and friends, no one will complain. They aren’t customers.