Tropical Hummingbird Cake

This is a special birthday cake for my mum's birthday. She loves fruits so I decided to make a tropical hummingbird cake having seen the recipe on bbc.co.uk.  The hummingbird cake I made earlier in the year which was also for a birthday contained bananas and pineapple. This cake has the addition of mangoes and passionfruit and it was really refreshing and delicious. The fruit flavours really came through and the sponge was very light.  The cream cheese frosting paired well with the cake.  However, I didn't like the texture of the passionfruit seeds which were crunchy but also a little 'sandy'.  Thankfully my mum loved it and she wants to make the same cake for Christmas this year.
I also wanted to try out some new molds that I bought recently - butterfly and daisy mold. They didn't quite turn out as some of the cake stuck to the mold and I didn't have time to do much creative decorating but it still looks quite cute.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MUM!!

 new cake moulds

 cake batter 

 layering with cream cheese frosting

 double layer cake

 mini cakes - slightly burnt!

mini cakes decorated with M&Ms :)

 pre-decoration 

 final cake 

 you can see the bits of fruit and nuts. Delicious! 

For the cake
250g/8¾oz plain flour
250g/8¾oz caster sugar
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
3 free-range eggs, beaten
200ml/7fl oz sunflower oil, plus extra for greasing
50g/1¾oz pecan nuts, roughly chopped
50g/1¾oz walnuts, roughly chopped
2 bananas, mashed
1 large mango, peeled, stoned removed, flesh mashed
2 passion fruit, pulp only
85g/3oz tinned pineapple, mashed
1 orange, zest only

For the cream cheese frosting
200g/7oz full-fat soft cheese
50g/1¾oz unsalted butter, softened
1 orange, zest only
400g/14oz icing sugar

• Preheat oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4. Grease and line three 20cm/8in cake tins.
• Sift the flour, caster sugar, ground cinnamon and bicarbonate of soda together in a bowl.
• Stir in the eggs, sunflower oil, nuts, fruit and orange zest until well combined.
• Divide the cake batter among the three cake tins and bake in the oven for 30-35 minutes, or until risen and golden-brown.
• Remove from the oven and set aside to cool for 10 minutes. Run a round-bladed knife around the inside edge of the tins to loosen the cakes. Remove the cakes from their tins and transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.
• Meanwhile, for the cream cheese icing, blend the cheese and butter together with an electric whisk until thick and creamy. Add the orange zest and sift in the icing sugar. Stir gently until well combined, then chill in the fridge until needed.
• Once the cakes are cool, spread cream cheese icing on top of each cake. Stack the cakes to make one three-tiered cake.