members recipes

This is a very easy cake to make. I\'ve always loved the idea of Hummingbird Cake, but never been satisfied with any recipe I\'ve tried. Until now. Here\'s what I\'ve come up with. Notes on ingredients: * Hummingbird cake is usually made with oil, not butter. I prefer it with butter, but oil can be substituted for the butter in this recipe. If so, you may want to add another half teaspoon or so of salt. * Getting ready to make the cake yesterday, I realized I had everything except the brown sugar I would normally use for it. So I used the organic raw sugar (a fine-grained raw sugar) which we always have in the house, and golden syrup for the extra caramelly flavour. The cake came out fine.

Ingredients
375g butter
375g self-raising flour (or 360g plain flour and 15g baking powder)
2 tsp instant coffee powder
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground ginger
¼ tsp salt
375g brown sugar (or 315g organic raw sugar, and 60 mL golden syrup)
90g dessicated coconut
220g peeled banana, mashed
220g tinned crushed pineapple
5 eggs
100g roasted, unsalted cashews (or waluts or pecans)

Method
• Preheat oven to 180 C.
• Grease a 26cm deep round cake tin, or springform tin, and line base. (If it’s not a non-stick tin, line both base and sides with double thickness of paper. With a springform tin, though, this is not necessary.)
• Chop nuts fairly finely - about 3mm pieces. Set aside.
• Melt butter and allow to cool (not necessary if using oil). Whisk in golden syrup, if using.
• Sift flour, coffee, cinnamon, ginger and salt into large bowl, add sugar and coconut, and stir to combine, breaking up any lumps of sugar.
• When butter is cool, whisk in banana, pineapple and eggs.
• Add butter mixture to dry ingredients, and mix well.
• Mix in nuts.
• Turn mixture into prepared tin.
• Bake for 1 hour 15 mins, or until a skewer comes out clean from the centre. Lay a piece of foil loosely over the top if the cake browns too much too quickly.
• Leave in tin for 15-30 mins before turning onto a wire rack.

Ice top of cake with cream cheese icing, or with the icing below.

250g icing sugar
50g sour cream
20g butter
¼ tsp instant coffee powder or cinnamon

• Blend all together very well with hand-held electric beaters.