Birthday Girl

Our flatmate Serene turned 22 today. Her favourite cake is a hummingbird cake which I had never heard of before so I googled some recipes and the best looking one came from The New Zealand Woman's Weekly website. The cake was a success, I was very happy with how well it turned out, a very moist cake due to the banana and pineapple. The cream cheese frosting was delicious and matched the cake perfectly.

Hummingbird Cake
3 eggs
1 cup caster sugar
1/2 cup rice bran or grape seed oil
440g can crushed pineapple, drained of juice

2 mashed bananas
1/2 cup desiccated coconut
1 1/3 cups self-raising flour

Pinch of salt
1 tsp ground cinnamon

Cream Cheese Icing
250g cream cheese, at room temperature
1/2 cup icing sugar
Finely grated zest and juice of half a lemon

Pre-heat oven to 160°C. Grease and line the base of a 22cm round cake tin with baking paper. Place the eggs and sugar in a bowl and beat until pale and creamy, then beat in the oil. Stir in the drained pineapple (but not the juice), mashed bananas and coconut. Sift flour, salt and cinnamon over egg mixture and stir to combine. Spread mixture into prepared tin and bake for 65 minutes or until a skewer inserted in the centre comes out clean. Remove cake to cool completely.

To make cream cheese icing, beat cream cheese until smooth then beat in icing sugar, lemon zest and juice. Spread over cooled cake and decorate, as desired.

As a gift from myself and Anu, I made a jar of homemade crunchy peanut butter and a cute card. Happy Birthday Serene!