My Girl Paula! Hummingbird Cake

This week's selection for My Girl Paula! was her Hummingbird Cake. Wow, what a great choice!! I made this cake for my Mother-in-law's birthday cake and everyone loved it!! Of course, our three-year-old thought it was HIS birthday! LOL!! He thinks every birthday is HIS birthday! :)

Anyway, I made the cake on Saturday. It came together very easily and didn't even need the mixer!! You do use mashed bananas in the cake, so here's a tip if bought your bananas and they haven't ripened just yet: Put them in a brown paper bag with an apple for 24 hours. The gases from the apple will ripen the bananas. Pretty cool, huh? The only small addition I made was to add 1/4 teaspoon Fiori di Sicilia with the vanilla. After my cake cooled I wraped it in plastic wrap and refrigerated it until the next day. Sunday I made up the icing, which is a basic (but very good!!) cream cheese/powered sugar icing. The last time I made a three tier cake I decided I would only ice the insides and top, since it was hard to ice all three tiers and seemed like a lot of icing. I'm glad I did it this way, because the cake is so moist and flavorful, you really only need a little icing. I set the cake in the refrigerator for the day until the birthday party began. Everyone loved this cake. The recipe says it feeds 18, but I don't think so!! We ate over half of it and the rest went to my husband's office the next day. We offered it to my MIL, but part of her gift was a strawberry-rhubarb pie, so she thought she had enough sweets. Our verdict is this cake is a keeper and we really like it - even better than carrot cake!! If you'd like to see the recipe, click here.

***Tomorrow's Post (hopefully!!): Baking Gals Cookies for my Soldier***