Monday, March 16, 2015

Hummingbird Bundt Cake

Whenever there's a work potluck, I always get excited at the prospect of trying out a new recipe.  I love trying new recipes at home, but we end up with too much food that way!  I decided I wanted to try to make a bundt cake this time, as well as use the beautiful cake dome and pedestal that Sissy gave me for Christmas.



If you believe the Internet, the "Hummingbird Cake" came into fashion via a 1978 recipe in Southern Living magazine, and the same year it won the Favorite Cake Award at the Kentucky State Fair.  I mean, isn't that like the cake Oscars or something?  Apparently it's one of the magazine's most requested recipes of all time.  That made it good enough in my book to attempt, and as a bundt no less.

The only problem?  I didn't have over-ripe bananas; I like mushy ones for baking.  So I Googled and discovered I could bake the bananas (at 300 degrees, for 30 minutes) as a cheat shortcut.  It totally worked too, the bananas were super mushy and ready for mashing!  I also roasted pecans that I chopped in my food processor.


Every other time I've attempted a bundt, the cake hasn't come out cleanly.  So once again, I consulted Google.  I tried a method I found of melting butter and brushing the inside of the pan, vs. the flour and butter stick rubbing method.  I have to say, it worked amazingly well.  I'll do it that way all the time now.  The cake did not come out with a round bottom, so I had to level it out (and eat the "extra" bits of course).  And yes, those are chopped pecans you see at the top of the cake!  Those went into the pan before the batter.



I should have made the glaze a little runnier; it took two attempts to get the glaze to pour correctly, and it isn't the prettiest.  But then when you add the nuts and let is drip down, it starts to get prettier, right?   Mmmm...  I've got to admit, this cake was delish.


And my coworkers agreed too.  There were ZERO leftovers with this cake.  Good thing Dan and I ate those pieces I saved from leveling!

Here's the link to the recipe at Southern Living!  I followed it exactly, though I did use vanilla bean paste vs. extract, and I sprinkled spice vanilla sugar on the top of it all.  Happy baking!  This one is definitely going into my recipe collection.


No comments:

Post a Comment

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...