I just finished this sweet middle grade novel and it got me thinking about cake. Have you ever had hummingbird cake? It’s a southern classic packed with banana and pineapple and smothered in cream cheese frosting. Where did it orginate? Let’s work backwards.
Hummingbird cake is the most requested recipe from Southern Living magazine. It first appeared there in 1978, submitted by Mrs. L.H. Wiggins of Greensboro, North Carolina. Little is known about Mrs. Wiggins besides the fact that she was a widow from Virginia who worked as a housemother at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.
Mrs. Wiggins’ cake may have been the first layer version with frosting, but a similar recipe appeared in The Charlotte Observer in 1969. This version, made with canned pineapple and diced banana and baked in a tube pan, was run by food editor Helen Moore, who explained that it was called Doctor Bird Cake after the nickname of Jamaica’s national bird (the red-billed streamertail).
In 1980 Helen Moore printed another version of the cake, this time including chopped nuts and cream cheese frosting. She explained that the recipe came in a letter from a Jamaican airline. We gain further insight from Anne Byrn in her book American Cake (2016), where she states that the original recipe — an unfrosted bundt cake — came from a 1960s press release from Air Jamaica, which used a hummingbird logo on its jets.
However, even earlier, spiced cakes with pineapple and banana appeared in community cookbooks throughout the early 20th century, often called A Cake that Lasts or Bird of Paradise Cake.
That’s as far back as I could trace the origins of the hummingbird cake. So perhaps the name comes from the Air Jamaica logo, but the recipe is older. If you know more, please leave a comment!
Sources
- “The history of the Hummingbird cake” via JamieOliver.com
- “The Mystery of the Hummingbird Cake” by Kathleen Purvis via Southern Living
- “Origin of a Classic: Hummingbird Cake” by Paula Disbrowe via BakeFromScratch.com