So yesterday I noticed we had a few over-ripe bananas in the fruit bowl, and I decided I wanted to make something new, rather than my fail safe Banana Muffins. And so I did a search and found a recipe for Hummingbird Cake. Perfect, I thought, I only needed to buy the crushed pineapple and some cream cheese. It’s a pretty simple recipe, great to whip up for afternoon tea or to use up any extra bananas.

250g self-raising flour
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground coriander
200g brown sugar
50g desiccated coconut
440g can crushed pineapple, drained plus 1/2 cup juice
 2 or 3 over-ripe bananas, mashed
 2 eggs, lightly beaten
125ml (1/2 cup) canola or vegetable oil

CREAM CHEESE ICING
100g cream cheese
70g unsalted butter
1 tsp vanilla extract
275g icing sugar mixture
1/2 cup finely chopped walnuts, to garnish (optional)

  1. Preheat oven to 170°C. Grease and line the base of a 23cm square cake pan.
  2. Sift flour and spices into a large bowl. Add sugar, and coconut and stir until well combined.
  3. Add pineapple and juice, banana, eggs and oil. Stir until just combined.
  4. Spread into lined pan and bake for 40-50 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. Place on a rack and set aside to cool.
  5. To make icing, place cheese, butter, vanilla and icing sugar in an electric mixer and beat until smooth. Spread on top of cooled cake. Garnish with walnuts, if desired (I’m not a fan of nuts in cake so I left these out).

Serves 8