A Neverending Learning Process

« Hummingbird cake with cream cheese frosting and dried pineapple flowers. (yes, that's really a flower made from pineapple.) »

Since work has been making for long days at the office, seemingly the only thing I can do that's remotely interesting, aside from rant about the various unpleasantries of my current project, is bake which I put a lot more thought and enthusiasm into than may be readily apparent or wise to admit to. It's still snowing like hell here so there are worse things than staying indoors while waiting for winter to finally bugger off.

One of the more appealing parts of finding recipes and making them is researching the history behind them as well as learning new methods or techniques. Also, I enjoy making the traditional local foods as a way to get to know the culture, but reversing that and inflicting non-fennicized versions of American foods on my colleagues is both entertaining and, at times, mystifying when they don't receive something as well as I was convinced they might. It's a neverending learning process. :)

Pineapple and banana have been frequent additions to Finnish desserts and main dishes for quite a few decades now, almost to the point of being a bit of a cliché. Pineapple is popular. Really popular. So, I was thinking I'd find a cake recipe with banana and pineapple from the US and see if it would be tasty or find out if their popularity might be limited just to Finnish cakes. I found something called Hummingbird Cake, a cake that I'd never heard of in spite of quite a few sources on the internet claiming that this cake is among the 10 most popular in the US. The cake originally appeared in Southern Living Magazine, a popular magazine throughout the US in spite of the name, in 1978. There doesn't seem to be an authoritative source as to where it might have come from before the magazine published the recipe though The Food Timeline does a good job of gathering what little is known.

I suspect that the name has everything to do with how very, very sweet this cake is as well as the tropical fruits it contains. One of my colleagues spent five years living in Chicago and returned to Finland late last year and we often compare notes on our perceptions of the US and of Finland. Perhaps one of the most interesting things that both of us noticed and agree on is the Finnish sweet tooth. Candies, sweets and cakes, both of us agree, have a much higher profile in daily life than they do in the US or, at least, the part of the US that both of us have spent the greatest amount of time in; the Midwest. There have been various articles in the Helsingin Sanomat in the past few years that also tend to support this observation in that the amount of sugar consumed per capita has skyrocketed in the past few decades, possibly due to the plenitude and availability of candy. My colleagues all really liked the cake and so I had that warm fuzzy feeling of choosing/guessing well.

The cake and the frosting are easy to make, but the pineapple flowers really are a beautiful addition if you have the time and patience for them. The flowers would really be perfect if you make individual hummingbird cupcakes with frosting and a pineapple flower on top of each. People don't think they're really pineapple until they start to eat them as the core looks just like the center of a daisy. I wasn't very impressed with the way the 'flowers' looked from the original directions from Martha Stewart and had the thought that, since the center looked so realistic, why not try to cut them into flowers and was really happy with the way they turned out. I made them the night before I baked the cake, which is likely a good idea since the time may vary for the pineapple to dry out.

I don't have much of a sweet tooth, but I have to admit that I enjoyed it as it reminded me somewhat of banana bread that my mother used to make. It is a heavy cake both in that I built some muscle carrying it to work and that it doesn't take more than a small slice to get your fix. The nuts in the cake also make it necessary to have a very sharp knife to cut through the cake neatly.

Hummingbird Cake

Serves: 16
Time: about an hour for the cake + bake time
Source: Southern Living Magazine

• 3 cups or 7dl all-purpose flour
• 2 cups or 4,75dl sugar
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 3 large eggs, lightly beaten
• 3/4 cup or 1,75dl vegetable or sunflower oil
• 1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla/vanilla sugar
• 1 8oz or 225g can crushed pineapple, undrained
• 1 cup chopped pecans
• 1 3/4 cups or 4,25dl mashed/pureed ripe bananas
• cream cheese frosting (recipe below)
• dried pineapple flowers (directions below)

1. Preheat oven to 350F/175C. Grease and flour 2 or 3 9-inch/23cm cake pans. Mash ripe bananas in a bowl with a fork and chop pecans into small, but not fine, pieces. Set aside.
2. Combine flour, sugar, baking soda, salt and cinnamon in a large bowl. Add eggs and oil until dry ingredients are just moistened. Add vanilla, pineapple, pecans and bananas, stirring until combined.
3. Pour batter evenly into 2 or 3 round cake pans.
4. Bake at 350F/175C for 23 minutes or until a wooden pick inserted into the center comes out clean. Cool in pans on wire racks for 10 minutes, remove from pans and cool completely on wire rack lined with baking paper.
5. Spread cream cheese frosting between layers and on top and sides of cake. Decorate with dried pineapple flowers. Store in refrigerator.

Cream Cheese Frosting

Makes: 3 1/4 cups or 7.5dl

• 1/2 cup or 113g butter, room temperature
• 8oz or 225g cream cheese, room temperature
• 16oz or 455g powdered sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1/2 cup or 1,2dl chopped pecans (sprinkle between cake layers)

Beat butter and cream cheese at medium speed with an electric mixer until creamy. Gradually add powdered sugar, beating at low speed until blended. Beat at high speed until smooth; stir in vanilla.

Dried Pineapple Flowers

Makes: about 2 dozen
Time: about 3 hours - prepare 1-3 days in advance

• 2 large pineapples (about 1kg) (the recipe works best if the pineapples are not quite ripe).

1. Heat oven to 225F/110C. Line a couple baking sheets with Silpat or parchment paper.
2. Peel pineapples with a serrated knife (Remove "eyes" using a very tiny melonballer, or paring knife if you don't plan to use a flower cookie cutter for shaping them.) Cut crosswise into very thin slices and place in a single layer on prepared baking sheets. Bake until tops look dry, anywhere from 1 to 2 hours.  Using tongs, flip slices over and continue to cook until reasonably dry, about an hour or so. Arrange on a wire rack and leave to cool and dry a bit more for a few hours. (note: A convection oven is an advantage for faster drying so use it if you have it.)
3. When slices are cool and dry, take a small metal flower-shaped cookie cutter and press into dried pineapple. Use a rolling pin on top of the cookie cutter to press firmly. Set cut flowers aside on the wire rack. When the flowers are dry, but still a bit pliable, hold the center of the flower between your thumb and forefinger in one hand and pull the petals of the flower upwards with your other hand to give them a more realistic look.
4. Store in an airtight container in the refrigerator up to 3 days.