Tropical cake

I love baking banana bread so when I saw this banana bread tin in America I knew I had to buy it.  As soon as I got home, I bought some bananas to ripen. However, I was too impatient to wait for them to ripen as I was so excited to use this tin! Plus my brother was making an unexpected visit and said if I wanted to bake a cake (he knows me so well!), he would take it with him and share it with his colleagues.  Of course I couldn't say no - I'm always looking for someone to eat my bakes and it was the perfect opportunity to try out my new tin. 

This tin inspired my cake which I made up as I went along. I wanted to use ingredients that I had and that had a tropical feel as that's what this tin says to me. Admittedly, I had to buy the mango and dessicated coconut (as I don't like coconut) but I had everything else at home. 

The cake was moist and flavourful and smelt very tropical.  It's a bit like Forrest Gump's box of chocolates - you never know what you are going to get next. Each bite of the cake had a different taste of the fruits - the first bite, I tasted banana and coconut, then pineapple and then mangoes.  I used a lot of fruit in this cake and I would recommend halving the fruit amount and increasing the flour if you prefer less 'bits' in your cake.  It also made a lot of cake as I managed to get 1 fancy cake as shown above and another medium sized bundt cake. 

I am entering these to simple and in season hosted by Ren from Fabulicious food 

and again (I know!) to my own AlphaBakes hosted by Caroline from Caroline Makes this month as the letter is M .... for mangoes!

PS apologies for the awful lighting in the photos - didn't realise until it was too late to fix!

 my brand new tin 

 banana, coconut milk, pineapple, dessicated coconut and mango 

 love the bright yellow colour and it smelt amazing! 

 adding the white ingredients - coconut milk and dessicated coconut 

 ready to go in the oven 

 hurray it came out of the tin like a dream

 love the detail :)

 'extra' batter which made a mini bundt cake 

 you can see the chunks of fruit in the cake 

An original recipe by bakingaddict 

125mls vegetable oil

200g brown sugar (increase this if you prefer a sweeter bake)

1 banana, mashed

1 mango - peeled and chopped into chunks 

260g pineapple, chopped into chunks (you can also use fresh pineapple)

3 eggs

100g dessicated coconut

250g self raising flour

165mls coconut milk

variations - you can add some spice (nutmeg or cinnamon would go well I think) or some nuts for crunch but reduce the fruit amount otherwise there will be no batter! 

• Preheat the oven to 180C. 
• In a large bowl, whisk the oil and sugar.
• Whisk in the eggs, one at a time until well mixed. 
• Mix in the yellow fruits - banana, mango and pineapple.
• Then the white ingredients - the coconut milk and dessicated coconut and mix well.
• Finally fold in the flour.
• Pour into prepared cake tin and bake in the oven for approximately 45-55 minutes (large tin) or 30-35 minutes (small tin).
• The cake should be golden brown and a skewer inserted into the centre should come out clean. 
• Allow to cool in the tin for a few minutes before turning out to a wire rack to cool completely. 

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.