No. 50 - Hummingbird Cake

Hummingbird cake was a dessert standard in a place I where worked over 20 years ago.  I looked up Hummingbird Cake on the internet recently and discovered there is loads of variety in the combinations of fruit used, and speculation about the name.  I suspect the name is some sort of nod to the range of tropical fruit that appears in these recipes ...that people (rightly or wrongly) associate hummingbirds and tropics.

This one uses mashed banana and crushed pineapple in the cake mix and sliced kiwifruit with the cream cheese filling between the layers.

Hummingbird Cake

3 cups flour
2 cups sugar
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon
3 beaten eggs
1.5 cups oil
2 tsp vanilla
1 x 250 gram tin of crushed pineapple & juice
2 cups mashed banana (about 6 average bananas)

Mix the dry ingredients, beat the eggs and oil together and add them to the dry stuff, add the vanilla and fruit.  Do not beat this mixture, blend is gently by hand until just mixed.

Divide the mix between 3 greased and papered 9" (23cm) round baking tins, and bake 20-25 minutes at 170-180 degrees C.  Cool a few minutes in the tins before turning these out on to racks to cool completely.

Icing and Filling

100 grams soft butter, 200 grams cream cheese, about 12 heaped tablespoons of fine icing sugar - beat all together well, spread 1/3 on each cake, put fine slices of peeled kiwifruit (or mango, or even tinned peaches if you like) on each and then stack them up.

Voila - hummingbird cake.   You might need a fork to eat this cake - it's not one to eat with one hand, wielding your coffee cup in the other, while contemplating the latest office emails.

Plum Sauce

The garlic sauce is good but this is my all time favourite homemade sauce.  In fact this is my all time favourite sauce - sausages, fritters, barbeque, baked potatoes, cheese toasties...

Plum Sauce

3 kg plums (small tart, dark red ones scrumped from trees that hang out of hedgerows are best)
2 large onions
1.5 kg sugar
6 cups malt vinegar
3 cloves garlic
2 Tb salt
1 tsp cayenne
2 tsp ground cloves
2 tsp ground ginger
2 tsp ground black pepper

Count the plums so that you know how many stones to extract from the stewed plums before you add the rest of the ingredients.  Either that or laboriously cut all the plums and remove the stones before you start. 

Add all the other ingredients and cook gently for about an hour.  I then whizz it up with the blender to make a nice smooth sauce.  Make sure it is close to boiling when you pour it into hot clean bottles and seal them up.

Let it mature for a couple of months before you use it.  It improves with age (the vinegar and spices mellow together and the flavour goes from raw to rich) so don't be afraid to leave it 6 months before you start to use it.

Recipe Book

This is the recipe book of the 10 year old me.  It has not been retired from service, and over 50% of the baking recipes in it are in my 10 year old handwriting.

 

It is a ring-binder covered in the sort of brown paper my mother used to use to line the Christmas Cake tin - sturdy, very sturdy - and decorated with pictures cut out of birthday cards. 

Mostly they seem to have been from my maternal Grandmother gave me - two pictures top right are actually from recycled vintage ones she had been given for birthdays as a child.  Perhaps I should have taken better care of them, but they have never been off display in that last 40 years or so.  You can possibly tell my maternal grandmother loved roses.  In fact she was well known locally for her roses and had won a trophy rose bowl in a local competition so many times they eventually awarded it to her to keep.

Strangely, despite the internet being a wonderful resource, I still work from recipes scrawled on paper.  I find it so much easier than refering to a computer screen set up in the next room - and quicker too for getting to that favourite recipe.   In recent years I have inserted some of the more worn pages into plastic slip covers

No. 49 - Steamed Loaf Take 2 - Fruit Tea Loaf

Now I have produced a firm (very firm) dense loaf which cuts easily and tidily into slices and can be buttered without falling to pieces and sticking to the butter-loaded knife.

Much better – possibly even too far the other way.    The recipe calls for self-raising flour and the only SR flour I had was wholemeal.  Too much bran.  On review I think that I would recommend 50/50 plain/wholemeal SR flour.

This amount made my three little tins and a 1 lb loaf tin which I baked in a tray of water in the oven.

 

Fruit Tea Loaf

500 g mixed fruit

1.5 cups of strong tea (use more if you are going for the full bran experience of wholemeal flour)
250 g caster sugar

Soak all this together for a few hours (preferably overnight)

1 egg

500 g self-raising flour  (or half/half wholemeal/plain self raising flour)
1 tsp mixed spice
1 tsp grated nutmeg

Stir the egg into the soaked fruit and sift in the dry ingredients.  Mix well and spoon it into your prepared baking (or steaming) tins.  Steam for 1 hour.

You will need a 2lb loaf tin if you are baking it (1 hour at 170 degrees C – fan oven).  I suggest that you stand the loaf tin in a roasting dish with an inch of so of water in it.