Hummingbird Cake. A Family Tradition
I can't remember a time when Homecoming wasn't part of life at our country church. It's still held every year on the second Sunday in June, just as it was when I was growing up in the Hopewell community of Bessemer, Alabama. There were certain things about Homecoming we could always count on.
People who had moved away came back. Families gathered. The graves in the cemetery were decorated with flowers, just as they had been for generations. There was always a guest preacher and singing. Lots of singing.
In my earliest memories, the meal after church was dinner on the ground as some called it, where long tables made from rough wooden planks, weathered by years of sun and rain, stood on the church grounds. They weren't fancy. They didn't need to be. By the time everyone gathered around them, there was hardly an empty place left.
As the years passed, and a new church was built, dinner moved inside to the Fellowship Hall, and even though some still referred to it as "dinner on the ground," most simply called it Homecoming. The location of the meal changed, but not much else. The people came back. The graves were decorated. There was preaching and singing. And there was always more food than we could possibly eat.
By Homecoming in 1978, I was married and seven months pregnant with our first baby. A second Sunday in June in the South could be hot. I was certainly thankful by then that dinner was served inside the Fellowship Hall.
The tables were full of platters of fried chicken, sliced ham, and always a beef pot roast. Lima beans, green beans, and candied yams sat alongside bowls of potato salad, deviled eggs, casseroles, homemade breads, cakes, pies, and always made from scratch banana pudding. Everyone seemed to have something they were known for bringing.
My mama always brought her chicken and cornbread dressing with giblet gravy. It was real Southern dressing, made from cornbread, not a package of stuffing mix. Some dishes simply belonged at Homecoming, and Mama's cornbread dressing was one of them.
But that year, Mama had something new to add to the table.
A few months earlier, in February, she had found a new cake recipe she wanted to try. Mama liked trying new cake recipes, so finding one in Southern Living that caught her attention wasn't unusual.
She made the cake for our family Easter dinner, and we loved it. But when anyone asked for the recipe, Mama wasn't quite ready to share it. She had plans for that cake. She had already decided she was going to make it again for Homecoming.
It was simply called Hummingbird Cake.
The recipe had been submitted by Mrs. L. H. Wiggins of Greensboro, North Carolina, and was published in the February 1978 issue of Southern Living in an article called “Making the Most of Bananas.”
Made with bananas, crushed pineapple, and pecans, then covered with cream cheese frosting and sprinkled with chopped pecans, it was different from the cakes we were accustomed to seeing on our table.
We don't know much about the history of Hummingbird Cake. There are recipes for similar cakes that predate 1978, including one known as Doctor Bird Cake (from Jamaica). But for the sake of the Southern girl I am, I'm hanging on to Hummingbird Cake.
By the time Homecoming arrived in June, Hummingbird Cake was no longer new to our family. We had already tasted it at Easter, and we knew Mama had found a keeper.
Now it had a place on the Homecoming table alongside all those cakes and pies made from recipes that had been passed around among families for years.
I don't remember who cut the first slice or who was the first to ask Mama for the recipe. I don't even remember whether there was a crumb left when the day was over. Nearly fifty years have passed, and some of those little details I don't remember.
What I do remember is that Hummingbird Cake didn't disappear when Homecoming was over.
Mama made it again. And again.
Somewhere along the way, the cake that had been the new recipe in the February issue of Southern Living became one of our family favorites.
And now, nearly fifty years later, I'm standing in my own kitchen baking a Hummingbird Cake from the same recipe Mama discovered in 1978. I measure the flour and sugar, chop the bananas and pecans, add the crushed pineapple, and make that familiar cream cheese frosting.
Somewhere along the way, I even published the recipe in my family cookbook, Harvest. It seemed only fitting. A recipe Mama once held onto until after Homecoming had become one I wanted to make sure was passed along.
Same recipe. Different generation.
Mama couldn't have known when she tried that new recipe for Easter in 1978 that we would still be making it all these years later. She probably wasn't thinking about family traditions at all. She had simply found a cake she wanted to try.
If I know my daughter like I think I do, this recipe isn't going anywhere. And one day, my granddaughters will stand in their own kitchens with flour on the counter and pecans waiting to be chopped, making the same cake their great-grandmother first made all those years ago.
Maybe that's how traditions begin. Someone simply decides to try something new, and before we know it, we're passing it along to the next generation.
So perhaps it's time to bake a Hummingbird Cake for your own family. Who knows? You may be starting a tradition without even knowing it.
And if you want to be a little different, you can always call it Doctor Bird Cake. As for this Southern girl, I'm sticking with Hummingbird Cake.
It's a keeper.
Hummingbird Cake 1978
Cake
- 3 cups all-purpose flour
- 2 cups sugar
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 3 eggs, beaten
- 1½ cups salad oil
- 1½ teaspoons vanilla extract
- 1 (8-ounce) can crushed pineapple, undrained
- 2 cups chopped pecans or walnuts, divided
- 2 cups chopped bananas
- Cream Cheese Frosting (Recipe follows)
Directions
Heat the oven to 350°F. Grease and flour three 9-inch round cake pans.
Combine the flour, sugar, salt, baking soda, and cinnamon in a large mixing bowl.
Add the beaten eggs and oil. Stir just until the dry ingredients are moistened. Do not beat the batter. This is important to the old recipe and to get that tender texture this cake is known for.
Stir in the vanilla, undrained crushed pineapple, 1 cup of the chopped pecans, and the chopped bananas.
Divide the batter among the three prepared pans.
Bake at 350°F for 25–30 minutes.
Remove the layers from the pans and cool completely before frosting.
Spread Cream Cheese Frosting between the layers and over the top and sides. Finish by sprinkling the remaining 1 cup of chopped pecans over the cake.
And I could not resist the decorative pecans in a star shape to finish off the look of the cake. After all, that's what my mama always did!
Original Cream Cheese Frosting
- 2 (8-ounce) packages cream cheese, softened
- 1 cup butter or margarine, softened
- 2 (16-ounce) packages powdered sugar
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
Note: My mama always cut this frosting recipe in half. It makes too much!
Cream the softened cream cheese and butter until smooth. Gradually beat in the powdered sugar until light and fluffy, then stir in the vanilla. This makes enough frosting for the three-layer cake.