Meet The Super Moist Southern Cake That Tastes Like Banana Bread

Now, here's an example of two great foods that go great together. Who doesn't like a good piece of cake, whether that's angel food cake, carrot cake, or any other kind? And who doesn't like a nice slice of banana bread? Well, here's a cake that tastes like banana bread — and there's a good reason for that. It's called hummingbird cake, and it's made in part from mashed-up bananas. Although it's quite popular in the South, it's originally from Jamaica, but spread to the United States thanks to being submitted to a certain magazine, back when recipes spread through magazines and not through TikToks with carefully calibrated ASMR sounds.

Hummingbird cake is made from bananas mixed with pineapples, rum, and a particular spice blend that includes cinnamon, nutmeg, and vanilla extract. It's also usually iced with cream cheese frosting, which makes it easier to spread. Thankfully, you won't find any actual hummingbird in the cake. It's named after the national bird of Jamaica, the swallow-tailed hummingbird. (Then again, hummingbirds have notorious sweet tooths — or sweet beaks, as the case may be — so maybe they'd find something to enjoy in the cake, too.) The Southern version, of course, includes pecans.

Hummingbird cake gained popularity through Southern Living magazine

So how did this Jamaican dessert become so popular in the South that you'd be forgiven for thinking it originated in the land of Dixie? Well, first, the Jamaican Tourist Board shared the recipe in 1968 as a way to encourage Americans to come visit. (This was in the years following Jamaica's independence from the United Kingdom, and while it of course had a national identity of its own, it wasn't quite a known quantity internationally at that point.) 

Over the course of the next decade, it began to gradually spread across the South, but it didn't become truly well-known until Southern Living featured one Mrs. L.H. Wiggins' recipe for the cake in 1978. Wiggins' contribution became the most widely-read recipe in the magazine's history, and remains a reliable favorite to this day.

It should be noted, though, that hummingbird cake is much more popular in the South than in Jamaica. If you were to go to a bakery in Jamaica, you'd find banana bread, rum-infused black cakes, and treats descended from Portuguese Jews such as gizzada, but hummingbird cake isn't nearly as much of a hit. Still, it's hard to quibble with good cake, right?

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