Hummingbird Cupcakes

It was Ms. Nat's birthday and I thought it was a great excuse for me to bake. The last time I baked was when the cake took 3 days to finish! Ms. Nat wanted hummingbird cake, so she got just that. Instead of the usual large cake, I decided to make cupcakes, it's cuter too!

I used the recipe from the Hummingbird Bakery cookbook but as usual, modified it according to my taste.

To make 34 cupcakes, I used the following proportions:

Ingredients

• 450g caster sugar
• 4 extra large free range eggs (room temperature)
• 450ml sunflower oil
• 400g peeled super ripe bananas, mashed (approximately 5 large bananas)
• 1.5 tsp ground cinnamon
• 430g plain flour
• 1.5 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 300g tinned crushed pineapple, remove syrup
• 250g shelled pecans and walnuts, roughly chopped
• 34 paper cups
• muffin tray

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 170C
2. Put the sugar, eggs, oil, banana and cinnamon in large mixing bowl - mix with wooden spoon until ingredients are well combined
3. Add the flour, bicarbonate of soda, salt and vanilla extract and continue to mix with wooden spoon until everything is well mixed.
4. Stir in the crushed pineapple, pecans and walnut until evenly dispersed.
5. Spoon mixture into paper cups 3/4 full and place into muffin tray
6. Bake in the preheated oven for 20 minutes, or until golden brown 
7. Remove cupcakes from muffin tray and place on  wire cooling rack to cool completely
8. Once cooled completely, ice cupcakes with cream cheese frosting

Cream Cheese Frosting 

• 600g pure icing sugar, sifted
• 100g unsalted butter, at room temperature
• 250g cold cream cheese, cut into small cubes

1. Beat the icing sugar and butter together until it's well mixed. 
2. Add the cream cheese in one go and beat until it is completely incorporated. 
3. Continue beating until the frosting is light and fluffy, at least 5 minutes. 
4. Do not overbeat as it can quickly become runny
5. Place frosting into piping bag with the desired piping tip
6. Ice cupcakes

Have fun!

Cheers.