The Sweet Joy of a Hummingbird
I love hummingbird cake. But without a Magnolia Bakery close by, what was I to do?
I love hummingbird cake.
After years of living in Manhattan and frequent jaunts to any available Magnolia Bakery, I became addicted to this fine delicacy. The sweet taste of baked banana and bits of pineapple mixed with the nutty, earthy crunch of pecans in a rich cake, topped with a heap of cream cheese frosting. Heaven. I try to describe it to friends who have never had the pleasure of their mouth savoring this confection, but I don’t do it justice.
“It’s like the texture of a carrot cake, but so much better. No raisins to mess it up.” I’ve already lost them with the mention of fruit, and I’m not even describing the actual fruit contained in the cake.
When I left New York City’s upper west side and moved to the Washington, DC area during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, I panicked. How would I have access to my hummingbird cake?! Obviously, this was a much-needed comfort to break from the reality of masks, boosters, and FaceTime conversations with family and friends instead of IRL meetups. But the lone Magnolia Bakery in DC shut its doors in December 2020, and I found no other bakery that came close. It was devastating.
I barely cook, let alone bake. I use the same pot and pan for my dinner rotation of spaghetti and tacos, and I wouldn’t know the first thing to do with a KitchenAid mixer. All those attachments frighten me. So, creating my own hummingbird cake was out of the question. In my new home outside of DC, I would settle sometimes for a good slice of rainbow cake ordered from a local TGI Fridays, but who are we kidding? It had nothing on my hummingbird. And thus, I put it out of my mind until I was able to get in a few trips to New York and snag a slice. I always called first to make sure the cake was still available and if it wasn’t, I would walk 20 or 30 blocks to another Magnolia Bakery location to find my prize. I wandered those streets on a mission, and I wouldn’t let the concrete jungle defeat me. To the victor belong the spoils!
But a trip to NYC here and there was never enough. Eventually, I resolved to eat my favorite dessert only sparingly and call it a special treat, like stumbling upon a Law & Order episode in syndication that I’ve never seen before. So rare and unexpected, and oh so thrilling.
The universe has a plan. Sometimes it’s a really fucking gnarly plan. But nonetheless, it still has a plan. — Ariana Grande
Just when my taste buds were starting to forget the feel of sweet euphoria on my tongue, my boyfriend Roger came to the rescue. On a random Friday when I was visiting him in Los Angeles (we’re long distance, he lives there, that’s another story for another time), he came home from work with three large grocery bags.
I tried to take the bags to help put up the food. Roger waved his hand to shoo me away, then went into the first bag and pulled out a bunch of bananas.
“What do you think I’m going to make tonight?” he said devilishly.
“Um, banana pudding?” I replied.
He pulled out a can of pineapples. “Now what do you think?”
“A pineapple upside down cake?” I suggested, even though I was pretty sure there aren’t bananas in that recipe.
When he pulled out a canister of pecans, I lost my mind.
“A hummingbird CAKE?!!!”
My sweetheart is a wonderful cook, don’t get me wrong, but my skepticism started to run high. How would this turn out? Would I have to pretend to like it if it were sub-par? Would this ruin me for hummingbird cakes in the future? I said none of this. I did what a good girlfriend should do — I expressed overwhelming gratitude and got out of the way. (Likely to watch a Law & Order rerun.)
Roger prepared the ingredients, pulled down the KitchenAid and went to work. By the time the cake batter moved from liquid to solid in the oven and was finally set out to cool, my anxiety turned into excitement. And when he finished making the frosting from scratch and had me taste test it, I was full on foaming at the mouth. He frosted the cake and I looked at him like a child on Christmas morning, expectant with wonder.
That first slice and every slice afterward was magical.
Any hummingbird cake recipe will tell you that the use of pineapple and its juices are the key to the cake’s moistness and longevity. Every bite I had was truly an experience. I’m not exaggerating when I say that cake was the best dessert I’ve ever tasted. I don’t know if it’s the “absence makes the heart grow fonder” adage or because it was made with love or because it was just a damned good cake, but I didn’t take it for granted. I saved a slice and preserved it in the freezer like it was the top tier of somebody’s wedding cake. To mark the culinary success, Roger and I will take it out a year from now and I’ve no doubt that it will be just as good.
To learn more about the origins of hummingbird cake or to download a recipe, visit SouthernLiving.com.
