- Have you ever dreamt of a cake that could bring
a drop of tropical sunshine to the grayest of days?
Well say hello to a hummingbird cake.
Banana, pineapple, pecans, a lot of spices,
and it's smothered in cream cheese frosting
and topped with pineapple flowers.
These are not flowers, they are made out
of pineapple slices.
Hey you're watching Preppy Kitchen where I,
John Kanell, teach you how to make delicious homemade dishes
to share with your family and friends.
This cake isn't gonna make it self so let's get started.
First off, let's talk about the decoration scheme.
The cake is not gonna have buttercream flowers
and it will never have fondant flowers.
It will have pineapple flowers.
(pineapple crunches) The only tricky part
is the knife-work so let's talk about that.
First off, you want to cut the skin off.
And let's chop these up.
All I wanna say is chop with confidence
and mind your fingers.
So try and get a thin slice and (knife slams)
confidently (chuckles) go down.
(knife clinks) This is too thick
but we can still use this and we'll talk
about that in a second.
So down, thin slice, and you can massage the top half
above the core but when you get to the core
you have to go
(knife slams) down.
These make amazing cupcake toppers, by the way.
And any discards that aren't right can just go
into your smoothie the next day.
You kind of have to get into the groove with cutting before
you hit your stride.
That's enough to get started with.
The cake doesn't need to have that many pineapple flowers.
What we need to do now is inspect our flowers.
This one's fine.
Some of these are really thick on one side so here,
that's how you get a paper thin slice off.
So when I'm cutting these slices I'm actually pressing down.
This is where most of the pressure is going.
And very very slowly in a controlled fashion,
I'm using my sharp knife to move forward.
It's not a lot of force like this, it's force down.
That's the safe way to do it.
Right now, I'm filming this video in like
the depths of winter on the east coast so it's been very
like gray and dark outside and I'm having some friends over
so I thought it would be fun to have like a warm tropical
cake which would mean a hummingbird cake
is the perfect choice.
All right, this thinnish slice will turn into a flower
when it's dehydrated.
We're gonna use some paper towels for this.
Pop it onto a paper towel, and press.
Press, press, press.
And you can see here,
so much less water.
The more water you squeeze out now,
the faster they'll dehydrate.
Here we go, one on there.
Repeat the process.
If you get little tears like this,
it's totally totally totally fine because like a flower,
it'll have petals and the petals help it crinkle up more.
Okay, last one onto our baking sheet into the oven
at 250 for half an hour and then every half hour,
you're just going to carefully flip them over
and I actually pat them dry as well.
So like pat, pat, pat, pat, pat.
When you lift it up, you'll see the little beads
of pineapple juice, I'll go pat pat pat,
dry dry dry and then you're gonna be done with the oven time
after they've shrunk up a bit, they'll be noticeably dryer
and more golden in color.
So into the oven, and we can start our batter.
And yes, you can make these the night before.
Before we make the batter, let's prep those pans.
I'm making this cake as three six inch layers
but they're gonna be very high like tall six inch layers.
Two eight inch layers will work just fine, though.
A lot of people have eight inch cake pans at home
and might not have little six inch cakes.
(pans clink)
Butter those pans, coat them in flour,
that's all ready.
Now for the batter.
330 grams or two and three quarter cups
of all purpose flour, here we go.
Love being exact.
Kitchen scales are the best.
Now, two teaspoons of baking soda, one teaspoon of salt
and (chuckles) I might have run out of salt
so I'm gonna have to use the super fancy flaked salt
which is really for like garnish and decorating.
That's a teaspoon, and I'm just gonna ASMR it.
(salt grinds) In my hands
so just crush it up.
Use regular salt. (laughs)
One teaspoon of cinnamon, half a teaspoon of all-spice,
one of my all-time favorites,
doing half a teaspoon of cardamom, too.
(mumbles) It smells so good.
If you don't have cardamom, get some.
All right, let's sift it up.
Giant salt flakes. (laughs)
(salt grinds)
Grab a whisk.
Just whisk it up.
We're done with the scale,
this can get set aside and now it's for those bananas.
This is what you want.
This is like the bare minimum of ripeness
if they're not spotted and brown,
go ahead and just put them on a baking sheet,
and bake them at 350 for maybe ten minutes.
Disgusting for eating but perfect for baking.
These will work just fine, though they're very fragrant.
So mash your bananas up. (upbeat music)
This gets set aside for in a little bit
and now we're onto the wet ingredients.
(bowl clanks)
For the wet ingredients, I'm using three quarters
of a cup of sour cream.
Lots of moisture, not gonna be super oily at all.
And if you don't have sour cream, you can use plain yogurt.
Three quarters of a cup of vegetable oil,
about two teaspoons of vanilla,
I love how all the vanillas have a different aroma.
That's Tahitian vanilla and it almost
has like a marshmallow cotton candy.
All right, three eggs.
Whoa. (chuckles)
gonna give this a little preliminary whisk
to break up the sour cream.
Definitely yes, you could use a stand mixer for this,
by the way. (glass clinks)
Ooh, that vanilla's so fragrant.
I love it.
Two thirds of a cup of white sugar,
and then one cup of brown sugar.
There you go.
Lightly packed.
Whisk that in there.
So while I was making that batter,
my timer went off and these guys are ready already.
They didn't need any flipping
because I've got so much moisture out of them.
They look kind of like flowers right now
but what we're gonna do is place them in here,
so I'm placing them into mini cupcake papers,
and you just press down.
So if you cut these thin enough and get enough moisture out,
they really only have to bake
for like twenty-five minutes or half an hour.
And they will, depending on how dry they are,
either take a long time or no time at all to set up.
And you'll have like cute little flowers
that you can decorate your cake with.
We're gonna set these aside,
flowers are done.
Back to the batter.
Time to add in that crushed banana and the pineapple,
eight ounces of crushed pineapple,
that's like the small container you can get at the market.
Okay so let's just mix that up really quick.
So tropical already. (laughs)
One cup of toasted chopped pecans.
'Cause then you're getting all the texture and crunch
and the fragrance of those pecans mixed in.
Get those dry ingredients,
we're gonna put the wet into the dry now and mix it up.
You're gonna fold it in, beat it in, mix it in,
whatever until just combined, don't over-mix it.
I got a DM on Instagram about my red velvet cupcakes
the other day and the person said that they were gluey
and like chewy.
It's because they'd over-mix the batter because they mix
to the food coloring in at the very end
but my point is is you don't wanna over-mix cake batter.
It is a thing.
So as you can see this is a lot of batter
and it's totally cool to use two eight inch layers
you'll have thick amazing layers and a big cake.
I'm doing the six inch ones which means I'm gonna
have some batter left over.
That's great.
I can make a little personal cake for me to taste
for you and I can have the nice cake for my friends.
That's what I'm gonna do.
Okay, so let's divide the batter evenly into our prepared
cake tins and then I have more batter left over for me.
I'm very excited for my personal cake.
So two of my most favorite words.
(spoon clinks) All right.
Let's pop some cake strips on these guys.
Okay, I'm gonna pop my super old cake strips on here.
These are basically strips of fabric that have been wetted
so they're damp now and they'll cool the cake down
on the edge as it bakes and that gives the center
enough time to rise up at the same level as the side
which means you get flat cake layers.
I have a whole video on it,
you can click up over here for that.
This guy's going in naked.
If it's domed, it's okay it's just for me.
I don't mind.
Okay these are gonna go into the oven
at 350 for about thirty-five to forty minutes.
My little baby cake is gonna be done sooner
so I'll keep an eye on it.
You wanna just make sure the center,
springy to the touch and the skewer will come out clean.
My cakes are out of the oven and while they're cooling
let's make some butter cream.
But not just any butter cream,
cream cheese frosting.
This is a delicious treat.
You need two eight ounce packages of cream cheese.
That's 452 grams, I think.
One cup of butter, shimmy on out of there.
Close that up, paddle attachment
but you can use a hand mixer with beaters as well.
And this is cream these two together.
(upbeat music)
After it creams up, I would just scrap the bowl
then really quickly because it's never a bad idea.
For the sugar, you can add in more or less.
It's actually up to taste.
My recipe specifies one and three quarters pounds
of powdered sugar, but you can add more,
you can add less.
It's really how do you like your frosting to taste,
and what is the consistency gonna be.
The more powdered sugar you add, the stiffer
it'll be and kind of the better for decorating
but you can add way less if you want it'll be more swoopy.
It's totally up to you.
So I'll add this in a few cups at a time.
And mix on low.
(mixer whirs)
(screen beeps) Mix on low.
(funky music)
Okay you can see I've added in a little bit of sugar
and it's very like you know, it's very soft.
So we're gonna add in a little bit more
along with some vanilla.
Back to my old friend, the babushka.
So let's pop this on here.
(funky music) (mixer whirs)
Helped, it helped.
This whipped up nicely
and now I'm just gonna add in a splash of vanilla.
(chuckles)
And just let it beat for a bit.
(mixer whirs) Okay look at this,
so beautiful oh my gosh.
(John munches) Mm-hmm.
Okay.
Now for the assembly,
start off by piping a layer of that delicious
buttercream frosting onto the top.
You could add a sprinkle of pecans.
You could add some pineapple pieces.
Anything you want, even coconut.
Piece number two and look how perfectly flat that is.
Do you see?
Nice flat cake layers.
My personal cake is not flat
'cause there was no cake strip for it,
it's very domed but it's okay.
Layer number two.
Layer number three.
Okay now we're gonna cover the cake in more frosting.
Now let's get those side layers.
Whoa.
That was just enough buttercream to almost cover the cake
but we're gonna take a lot off now in the smoothing process
so there'll be enough for my personal cake.
That's all I care about.
Now I will tell you, look at this.
Do you see this lean?
This frosting warmed up.
The cake was not cool enough.
So what I'm gonna do is scrape this down,
remove all the outside frosting,
turn this into a crumb-coat,
pop it into the fridge,
and now I'm going to add a little bit more sugar
to the remaining buttercream and chill everything.
Chill the cake out, had the skewers in there
so it's stabilized and we added more powdered sugar
to the outside layer.
And that'll just help it all be nice and comfy,
cozy, not moving in and hooving on over.
Oh dear.
I have a whole video called I think How to Decorate a Cake
with some ins and outs you can click up here
for that but I definitely need to update it with more
tips and tricks, there's so many things that go wrong
in cake decorating and most of the times in videos,
you don't see any of it.
It's all like magic like oh,
everything went right but so much can go wrong.
And it's okay, you can save it, it's not a big deal.
Most this cake isn't even gonna be visible
because on top, we're gonna have our beautiful
pineapple flowers and normally I like to have a wholly
flat top but here I want a bit of a mount.
(metal clinks)
Which I'll actually be exaggerating later on in the cake,
so I can have some hype for my flowers.
And one thing I'll caution against with any cream cheese
frosting is trying to get it to look perfect, don't.
You're gonna drive yourself baddy.
Finish this step off by just using a clean napkin
to remove the excess.
That's all you have to do.
All right, now I'm taking some more toasted chopped pecans.
And we're going to place them on the edge here.
This is called a skirt for the cake and it just adds
some visual interest but I always use things that I find
delicious so if it's a chocolate cake
I'll use like cacao nibs for any kind of a fruity cake,
I'll use like a toasted nut usually.
Gives you some contrast but also gives you some crunch
and depth of flavor.
And then if you're a little crazy,
you could also just place a couple of pieces
hither and thither (chuckles).
Just to create a bit of a gradient.
That looks good and now,
here's what's gonna happen.
I'm gonna add a little dollop on top of the extra
frosting, tamp it down a bit, tampa tampa tampa.
(chuckles) Our little pineapple flowers
had some time to set and what we're gonna do is just add
a few on the base here so they're a little bit soft still,
but that's okay because they're gonna be supporting
each other 'cause they're friends.
So I'm making a little base of flowers
and then we're gonna put just the one on top like this.
And if that is not a charming hummingbird cake
I don't know what is.
Look at this.
I love the pineapple flowers and it's gonna go perfect
on my personal cake which is my tasting version.
Don't you worry.
Looks pretty.
So by the by, I did bake that four inch cake,
cut it into three layers and then decorate it.
I just wanna show you the finishing touches.
Just a couple of these little pineapple flowers here.
I think it's so cute.
This is my snacking cake I made for you.
(chuckles)
Normally if there was any extra batter,
I would just bake it up into cupcakes,
but how cute is this?
What?
I'm so excited for this little personal cake
I made myself.
I can't tell you and it's time for a bite.
That is just a nice cake.
If you ever had any love of banana bread,
this is like the next step.
It's the next level.
It's delicious and you've gotta try it.
If you like this recipe, check out my flower cake playlist.
Beautiful flower cakes to delight the senses
and they're delicious too.
Hope you get to make this recipe and if you like my videos,
hit that like button and subscribe
and I'll see you in the next video.