Hummingbird Cake

This classic Hummingbird Cake is soft, moist and tender with the perfect amount of bananas, pineapples and pecans. This lightly spiced cake is layered with the best cream cheese buttercream frosting for a creamy, tangy finish.

Hummingbird cake is my preferred way to welcome Spring and Summer! I feel like it often plays second fiddle to the best Carrot Cake, but she deserves a shining spotlight of her own! The bananas and pineapple give it a tropical vibe like rum cake, this tropical trifle recipe, and these coconut cupcakes with marshmallow fluff frosting!

The crunchy pecans and generous amount of cream cheese buttercream frosting pull it back to the South. This cake is one of my favorite desserts of all time and has a firm place alongside other Southern favorites like pecan pralines, Southern cornbread, buttermilk biscuits and pecan tassies.

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Professional Tips for Making Hummingbird Cake

• A classic liquid fat cake mixing method. This is a similar mixing method that I use to make the carrot cake that Beat Bobby Flay. Emulsifying the oil into the beaten whole egg creates a moist, fluffy and tender cake. Whisking everything together is fine, but the resulting cake will be more dense and potentially oily.
• Blend the banana and pineapple together before adding. My recipe calls for blending the ripe bananas and canned pineapple (with its juice) together in a blender or with an immersion blender then adding it before the dry ingredients. This ensures an extra moist and light cake.
• Toast the pecans. Southern Living said it first and they were right. Toasting the pecans deepens their flavor and will help them maintain a crunch even after baking.

Ingredients Needed

• All-purpose flour: I use all-purpose flour because that is what most people have on hand. You could also use cake flour but you’ll need to sift it, please and thank you.
• Ground Cinnamon
• Baking Soda: Baking soda reacts with the acid in the canned pineapples, which creates a more powerful reaction than the same amount of baking powder. You can use baking powder instead but use 2 teaspoons.
• Kosher Salt
• Whole Eggs
• Vegetable Oil: Canola oil makes the most moist cake! Substitute with coconut oil if desired but not butter.
• Vanilla Extract
• Granulated Sugar
• Canned Crushed Pineapple: You are going to use the whole can and its juice. Since we are going to blend this with the bananas, you could use 8oz of any cut of canned pineapple (rings, chunks, whatever). You could use fresh pineapple but ensure it is very ripe and in-season. This is part of the liquids in this recipe, so using fresh adds an unknown quantity of liquid.
• Ripe Large Bananas: What is a large banana? It’s between 6-7 inches and about an inch in diameter. When in doubt measure! 1 cup is about 250g, so you would use 1 ½ cups of mashed bananas in this recipe. One last thing! Make sure those bananas are spotty and ripe. Not mush, but good and spotted. Save the very ripe bananas for old fashioned banana bread or this banana crumb bread.
• Pecans: You can always buy pecan pieces, not only will the toast faster than whole pecans but they are often less expensive!
• Cream Cheese
• Unsalted Butter
• Powdered Sugar
• Lemon Juice

See the recipe card for full information on ingredients and quantities.

Variations & Substitutions

• Canola Oil: You can substitute melted, but not hot, coconut oil for the canola oil in this recipe. It will produce just as moist a cake, unlike melted butter, which adds flavor but will not produce as moist a cake due to its water content.
• Soak your cake: You can never go wrong with a solid soak. Make simple syrup by boiling equal parts water and sugar then cooling to room temperature (or refrigerated). Use it plain or flavor it with rum, lemon juice, orange juice or your favorite alcohol. You heard it here first, this is an easy way to amp up the flavor of your hummingbird cake!  
• Flavor the buttercream: Use this rum cream cheese frosting from my red velvet cake recipe or just go ahead and add 2 tablespoons of your favorite booze to the buttercream recipe below! Add an extract or use orange juice in place of the lemon juice.
• Use a different buttercream:  This is going to be incredibly unpopular, but you could use a different buttercream. If you have a flare for the dramatic, try piling on this marshmallow frosting and giving a quick toast! This easy lemon buttercream frosting would also be complimentary and refreshing, or you could use a Swiss meringue buttercream flavored with homemade lemon curd.

How to Make Classic Hummingbird Cake

Use these instructions to make the perfectly moist cake every time! Further details and measurements can be found in the recipe card below.

Make & bake the cake:

Step 1: Spray and line two 8 or 9 inch round cake pans with parchment paper. Be sure to spray the sides of the pans. Preheat oven to 350°F conventional.

Step 2: Arrange pecans in a single layer on a baking sheet. Toast in oven until a golden brown and you begin smelling the “pecan” scent. Allow pecans to cool completely. Chop them if you used whole pecans. I just buy pecan pieces so I can skip this step. That extra time adds up when you’re talking about 500 pecan pies!

Step 3: In a medium bowl whisk together flour, cinnamon, soda and salt; set aside. In another medium bowl, use a hand blender or a regular blender to blend the pineapple and bananas together.

Step 4: In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, whisk the eggs until beaten. You can also do this step in a large bowl like I did in the YouTube video.

Step 5: Slowly whisk in the oil and vanilla until emulsified.

Step 6: Whisk in the sugar followed by the pineapple-banana mixture.

Step 7: Fold in the flour mixture until just combined followed by the toasted, cooled pecans. Divide between the two prepared pans.

Step 7: Bake until cake tester toothpick or bamboo comes out with only a few clinging crumbs but no wet batter streaks, approximately 25-30 minutes.

Step 8: Cool 10 minutes in the pans then turn out onto a cooling rack to cool completely upside down.

Make the frosting:

Step 1: In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment or in a large bowl with a hand mixer, cream the softened butter, cream cheese, and powdered sugar until smooth.

Step 2: Add the lemon juice and vanilla extract. Beat well.

Step 4: Spread the remaining buttercream over the sides and top. I swirled the top using my cake stand like a turn-table and the tip of my large offset spatula. Then I smoothed the edges using a bench scraper.

Step 5: Place whole pecans, banana chips, pineapple chips and dried pineapple in a pattern that you find pleasing. You can watch the video below to see how I did the one pictured. You could also cover the whole cake or go with the standard issue décor and add a rim of crush pecans.

Frequently Asked Questions

Before You Go

Check out our other delicious cake recipes like this Orange Upside Down Cake or dive into these carrot cake cupcakes for your next baking project!