Hummingbird Bundt Cake

Growing up, my mom and I used to visit this cute set of shops. The shops would always change, but what I look forward to the most was getting lunch at this great little soup/salad/sandwich place. It was a cafeteria-style place, and what I remember the most is the fantastic cakes that they had all along the food line. So many good things to drool over! They had a lot of different cakes, including a Hummingbird Cake, which I hadn’t heard of before. I don’t recall ever getting a dessert with lunch, but I sure remember looking at those cakes.

Well, I now live in the town where those shops are. When my husband and I first moved here, that lunch place was still thriving. They still had great looking desserts, too! They were selling a cookbook and we purchased it. I’m glad we did because that restaurant eventually struggled and finally closed. So I can no longer go there and dream about fantastic desserts, but I do have the cookbook to remind me of them.

This cake isn’t from that cookbook, but I remember their Hummingbird Cake. This is the cake in Bundt form, which travels so well. Think of it as a banana pecan pineapple cake, with cream cheese glaze. You are supposed to add the pecans to the cake pan and then pour the batter on top, but I mixed mine in to the batter and I like it that way. I served this for a birthday at work and it was great!

Hummingbird Bundt Cake

1 1/2 cups chopped pecans
3 cups flour
2 cups sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 eggs, lightly beaten
4 mashed ripe bananas
8 ounce can crushed pineapple, undrained
3/4 cup vegetable oil
1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla

4 ounces cream cheese, softened
2 cups powdered sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 to 2 tablespoon milk

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter and flour a large Bundt pan.

In the heated oven or in a microwave, toast pecans until fragrant, stirring halfway through. Set aside to cool slightly.

In a large mixer bowl, stir together flour, sugar, baking soda, cinnamon and salt. Add eggs, bananas, pineapple, oil and vanilla; stirring just until dry ingredients are moistened.  Stir in pecans and spread the batter in the prepared pan. (Alternative, sprinkle 1 cup toasted pecans into the prepared pan and spoon the batter over the pecans.)

Bake for 60-70 minutes, until a long wooden pick inserted in the center comes out clean.  Cool cake in pan for 15 minutes and then remove from the pan and cool completely on a wire rack.

Prepare glaze:  In a large mixer bowl stir cream cheese, powdered sugar, vanilla, and 1 tablespoon milk until well blended. Add additional milk, if required, to achieve drizzling consistency.  Immediately drizzle glaze over cooled cake, and sprinkle with the remaining pecans.

Recipe from Ryan Bakes

Banana-Stuffed French Toast

For this round of the recipe swap, the theme was breakfast. Breakfast opens up a world of possibilities, from sweet to savory, pastry, eggs, etc. The recipe I received was banana-stuffed French toast from Mary Ellen’s Cooking Creations. It’s a quick recipe to put together, and I ended up making breakfast for dinner one night and this was just great.

Now if you read my blog a lot, you may know that I am not the biggest fan of bananas. I like to try new things so I wanted to give this a go. I really don’t like the smell of bananas, so I figured that wouldn’t be too bad here. I recruited my husband to slice the banana, which was a nice help. I also got 6 slices of bread from the loaf. I let the bread soak in the egg for quite a while, and it really soaked it up. I ended up beating 2 more eggs (with some milk and spices) so that there was enough egg for all of the slices.

The first two pieces of French toast got a little burned, so I turned the heat down a bit and it was better. It’s hard to know when such a thick piece of bread will be done cooking, but following the directions Mary Ellen gave it worked out wonderfully. My husband and I really enjoyed this. I liked it quite a lot, and I am glad that I gave it a try. Thanks for the recipe Mary Ellen!

Banana Stuffed French Toast

1 banana
2 tablespoons brown sugar
1 loaf of French bread
3 eggs
1/4 cup milk
1 teaspoon sugar
dash of nutmeg
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon vanilla
Powdered sugar

Preheat oven to 300 degrees. Have a large skillet available, but don’t put it on the heat yet.

Slice the banana into thin slices and mix with the brown sugar. Set aside.

Trim the ends of the French bread and then slice the bread into 1-1/2” slices. Then slice 3/4 of the way through each slice, making a slit for the stuffing.

Whisk eggs with milk, sugar, nutmeg, cinnamon, and vanilla. Pour the mixture into a pie plate or other shallow pan.

Take a spoonful of the banana mixture and put it into the slit of each piece of bread. Make sure the bread closes around the stuffing. Dip the stuffed bread in the egg mixture; let the bread sit in egg mixture for about 2 minutes on each side.

Spray the skillet with cooking spray and heat it on medium. Put the bread in the heated pan and cook on each side for 2-3 minutes, until golden brown. (Repeat as necessary to cook all of the pieces of bread.)

Transfer the bread to a baking sheet. Bake for about 5 minutes to cook the bread all the way through. To serve, sprinkle with powdered sugar.

Recipe from Mary Ellen’s Cooking Creations