Hummingbird Cupcakes (banana, pineapple and pecan)

 

So, seeing as it was my birthday, I figured I had better make cakes for the netball girls. Netball was on Saturday morning – I had Friday off but was planning to be out all day, so cakes had to be made on Thursday evening after work. This meant two things – I needed to make something that would last well for a couple of days and that wouldn’t take too much time and effort.  I already had some ginger cake made at the weekend but wanted to take a second option. I had a flick through my recipe file and found the recipe for Hummingbird Cupcakes.  This is another recipe from the Sara Stanley cupcake course that I did at the Bertinet Kitchen (see also my Red Velvet recipe) and I love this recipe. I hadn’t made these for ages and they’re fairly easy to make, don’t need a lot of fussy decoration and they last really well, so decision made!

Tins of crushed pineapple aren’t always that easy to find – so, if needed, just use a normal can of pineapple and whizz the pineapple up in a food processor or mini chopper.  I chucked the pineapple and banana in a food processor and quickly blitzed them up together, and this worked really well.

The original Sara Stanley Hummingbird recipe topped the cupcakes with a vanilla cream cheese frosting – this is delicious and complements the cake flavours beautifully. However, the problem with cream cheese frosting is that it should be kept in the fridge – which isn’t great for the cakes themselves. As I was planning to keep the cakes for a couple of days, I wanted to do something different. As I had the pineapple juice leftover from the tinned pineapple, I decided to have a go at making pineapple buttercream. I reduced the pineapple juice down to approx. 60ml by microwaving it for 30 seconds at a time until suitably reduced. I then added this to my normal buttercream recipe in place of milk. It tasted great and really worked well with these cakes.

You may find that you need to make extra caramelised pecans – they’re delicious!

Hummingbird Cupcakes

Ingredients

1. 1 large egg
2. 1 egg yolk
3. 230g caster sugar
4. 110g corn/grapeseed/sunflower oil
5. 1 tsp vanilla extract
6. 125g low fat yoghurt
7. 100g mashed banana (1 medium banana)
8. 100g drained tinned pineapple, crushed
9. 160gg plain flour
10. Pinch of salt
11. ¼ tsp cinnamon
12. ¼ tsp bicarbonate of soda
13. Pinch of baking powder
14. 60g chopped pecans

For the pineapple buttercream

1. Leftover pineapple juice from the tin of pineapple
2. 110g butter at room temperature
3. 500g icing sugar 

For the caramelised pecans

1. 30g butter
2. 30g light brown sugar
3. 60g pecans

Method

1. Pre-heat the oven to 165C. Place 12 large cupcake cases into a bun tin and about 8 mini cupcake cases into a mini bun tin.
2. Whisk egg, yolk and sugar until pale and fluffy.
3. Stream in oil and vanilla, whilst continuing to whisk.
4. Add yoghurt, banana and pineapple and mix.
5. Sieve the flour into a separate bowl, add all the remaining dry ingredients and stir together.
6. Add the dry ingredients to the wet and stir gently until combined.
7. Fill the large cupcakes to two-thirds full and then use the remaining mixture to two-thirds fill the mini cupcake cases.
8. Bake until the cakes are golden and spring back when lightly touched. The mini cupcakes will take 15-25 minutes to bake and the larger cupcakes 20-30 minutes.
9. When baked, remove from oven and allow to cool in the tin for 5 minutes. Remove from the tins and allow to cool fully on a wire cooling rack. 

For the buttercream

1. Pour the pineapple juice into a microwaveable bowl and microwave for 30 seconds at a time until reduced to 60ml. Allow to cool.
2. In a large mixing bowl, beat the butter, reduced, cooled pineapple juice and half the icing sugar until smooth.
3. Gradually add the rest of the icing sugar and beat again until smooth and creamy.

For the caramelised pecans

1. Melt the butter in a small frying pan, over a low heat.
2. Add the sugar and pecans and stir for about 3 minutes until caramelised.

Nan’s Crispy Pineapple Bakes

It was my birthday on Friday and so last weekend I decided to have a bit of a bakeathon in preparation.  Throughout the week, I had planned to meet up with some friends and so I decided to bake one of my old reliables – Sticky Ginger Cake with lemon drizzle icing. I just love this cake – it is easy and fairly quick to make (although takes an hour to bake), tastes amazing and lasts brilliantly – so great for making in advance.

Having made the Sticky Ginger Cake, I felt like experimenting with something new – so had a search through my recipe file and found two recipes that I had copied out of my Nan’s handwritten recipe book, but hadn’t yet made: Crispy Pineapple Bakes and Gache Melee. I decided to give both a go – and pop them in the oven at the same time. I’ll tell you more about Gache Melee in my next post.

I don’t remember ever having had Nan’s Crispy Pineapple bakes but they sounded delicious – pineapple cake topped with syrupy cornflakes! They were fairly simple to make – except you need to allow a bit of time as you have to boil up the pineapple mixture and then leave it to cool for 30 minutes. The tricky bit is trying to tell when the cake is actually cooked. The recipe I was using said bake for 40 minutes – I think I ended up baking for about an hour and a half. However, having just had a check, I’ve realised that the recipe said (in typical handwritten recipe style) “Gas Mark 5?” – I took a guess and thought that this would be about 165C – having looked it up, it should be 190C – which will explain why it took so long to cook!  It is difficult to tell when it is baked as the cornflakes on the top prevent you from being able to get at the top of the cake to give it a test. I used the skewer test and in the end, it finally came out clean.

This cake is a squidgy, dense cake (well it was when I made it) – and that works brilliantly with the crispy cornflakes on top. The pineapple flavour comes through beautifully. These cakes are definitely best eaten fresh. If they are left, the cornflakes will go soft and the contrast in textures is lost.

I’ve converted the imperial measures to metric – so hope they work out ok. I’m definitely going to have another go at these – EHH really enjoyed them and I’d like to really get them right!

Crispy Pineapple Bakes

Ingredients

1. Large tin of crushed pineapple (432g)
2. 60g butter
3. 120g caster sugar (preferably golden)
4. ½ tsp mixed spice
5. 150g self-raising flour
6. 1 large egg (beaten)

Topping

1. 30g butter
2. 1 tblsp golden syrup
3. 60g cornflakes

Method

1. Place the crushed pineapple and juice, butter, sugar and mixed spice into a medium saucepan. Heat gently until the sugar has dissolved, stirring the whole time.
2. Increase the heat and boil rapidly for 3 minutes.
3. Remove from heat, pour into a bowl and leave to cool for 30 minutes.
4. Pre-heat the oven to 190C and line a brownie tin with baking parchment.
5. Add the flour and the egg to the cooled pineapple mixture and beat until smooth.
6. Pour the mixture into the prepared tin.
7. Melt the butter and golden syrup and bring to the boil (easiest to do this in a bowl in the microwave).
8. Remove from heat and stir in the cornflakes.
9. Sprinkle the coated cornflakes over the cake mix.
10. Bake in the oven for 40 minutes or until firm.
11. Remove from oven and  leave to cool in tin.
12. Remove from tin and cut into squares.