Hummingbird Muffins with Cream Cheese Glaze

Hummingbird muffins with cream cheese glaze. Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

 There's a lot of buzz over the name Hummingbird Cake, a classic Southern layer cake made with bananas, pineapple, pecans and cinnamon, frosted with cream cheese icing. For many years, it was the most requested recipe at Southern Living magazine, but their website doesn't offer an explanation for the whimsical name. I did find two plausible possibilities - the cake is so good that folks gather round the cake like hummingbirds to nectar. Or, my favorite, banana and pineapple are native to Jamaica and its national bird is the hummingbird. 

Either way, it's a delicious cake and well worth the effort if you're looking for a showstopper cake for the holiday table. Here's the link to Southern Living's original recipe. 

I decided to take the small view and make hummingbird muffins - moist banana muffins with chopped pecans and chopped dried pineapple. Can't forget the frosting, in this case, a sweet cream cheese glaze. Give this a try and tell all partakers that no actual hummingbirds were harmed to bake these muffins.

Hummingbird Muffins with Cream Cheese Glaze

Yield 1 dozen muffins

1 cup sugar

½ cup vegetable oil

2 eggs

1 1/3 cup (3 medium) bananas

2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon ground cinnamon

¼ teaspoon salt

¼ cup pecans, finely chopped

¼ cup dried pineapple, finely chopped

Cream cheese glaze

1.       Heat oven to 375. In a mixing bowl with an electric mixer, beat sugar, oil and eggs until light colored and foamy. Add mashed banana and beat well, batter will have a few lumps.

2.       In another bowl, combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon and salt. Add pecans and dried pineapple. Stir dry mixture into wet mixture and mix until just combined, less than 12 strokes needed.

3.       Use baking spray or liners (or both) in a muffin pan and fill each cup just to the top. Bake at 375 for 20 to 25 minutes. Muffins are done when the tops spring back after gently pressed, or when a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool for 5 minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack to cool. Glaze with cream cheese glaze. Store leftover muffins in refrigerator, bringing to room temperature before serving.

Cream cheese glaze

4 ounces cream cheese, at room temp

½ cup powdered sugar, sifted

2 teaspoon vanilla

3 to 4 tablespoons milk

1.       Using a whisk or an electric mixer, whip the cream cheese until it is soft and smooth. Gradually add the powdered sugar, whisking until it is free of lumps. Add vanilla, then milk, until the glaze is the proper consistency.

2.       Glaze hummingbird muffins. Store leftover muffins in fridge, bring to room temperature before serving.

  Text and images copyright 2012, Lucy Mercer.

Blue Ribbon Dreams Redux



It's late September and time again for the North Georgia State Fair, always an event for our family. From the petting zoo to the smoked turkey legs to the kiddie rides, we have a blast. Last year, I caught blue ribbon fever with my first entry into the baking categories. My Morning Glory Muffins took the honor, but my entries in the cookie and pound cake categories didn't place.

Well, I'm back at it again and planning my baking strategy for this week. I have three items that I plan to bake and enter, but I'm giving myself a break if all the recipes don't turn out as well as planned, or if my baking time gets cut short. (Let's see, two night meetings, piano, soccer, and a Very Important Birthday, all this week).

I'm going to go bold and enter the pie category with the best pie I baked this year - PieLab's Apple Cheddar Pie:



Apple Cheddar Pie by Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

For the cookie category, I'm thinking of submitting my all-time favorite cookie: Ginger-Raspberry. 



Ginger Cookies with Raspberry Jam. Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

 And if I have time, I might whip up the most-viewed recipe on my blog, Lemon Cream Cheese Pound Cake.

Lemon Cream Cheese Pound Cake by Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

Three stellar recipes, three shots at blue ribbon glory. I think I might be able to make it. My family may be eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for supper, but sometimes, sacrifices must be made. I just noticed that there's a cheesecake category, and I make a mean cheesecake....

How about you - have you caught blue ribbon fever? Do you plan to visit a state fair this fall?



Blueberry Muffins

The blueberry season is so brief, I have to take advantage of each berry that comes my way. The super-sweet local berries are gone now; even the birds are looking for something else to eat. Supermarket berries are usually flatter in flavor and not nearly as sweet, but they do cook well, and when they're cheap, I bake a lot of blueberry things. This week, I made blueberry muffins adapted from a recipe in "The Family Baker." Give them a try.

Blueberry Muffins

2 large eggs
1/2 cup milk
1/4 cup unsalted butter, melted
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2/3 cup sugar
1 1/2 cups fresh blueberries, picked over and rinsed

demerara or granulated sugar for topping

1. Preheat oven to 400 and position a rack in center of oven. Coat muffin cups with baking spray.

2. In a large bowl, whisk together the eggs, milk and melted butter. Place a sifter over the bowl and measure into it the flour, baking powder, salt and sugar. Sift the dry ingredients onto the wet and stir just to blend. Gently fold in the berries.

3. Divide the batter among the muffin cups, filling nearly full. Generously sprinkle sugar on top. Bake 20 to 22 minutes, until the muffins rise and are golden on top. Cool on a wire rack and serve warm.

These keep for a few days, well-wrapped at room temperature. Just zap them for 15 seconds for a breakfast treat. You'll be the queen of the cafeteria if you toss a wrapped muffin in your child's lunch box.

The Glory of Muffins

I received a phone call from the room mom the other day, asking me to send in a bag of chips for the kids' class party before the Thanksgiving break. The teacher will allow her fifth grade students to watch a movie and have a special snack. I laughed when my room mom friend asked me for chips. I said that if she wanted something homebaked, I'd be happy to oblige. To myself, I was thinking, "please, if you care at all for me, don't force me to make a third trip in three days to the supermarket!"

Fifth grade certainly is different from kindergarten and first grade, when daylong Thanksgiving feasts were celebrated and the children wore pilgrim hats and collars. Of course, the children always preferred to be Indians, with pasta beads around their necks, brown felt dresses and feathers in their hair. I treasure those years and probably still have at least one cardboard native headdress in the closet.

Back to fifth grade and my all-purpose home-baked goodie: morning glory muffins. Sort of a carrot cake muffin, these are loaded with fruit and love. They are a bit time-consuming to make, mainly due to assembling all the fruit. But they keep well and most children like them. You will get more praise from the teacher, however, because they have an aura of healthiness about them probably due to the fact that they're not covered in blue frosting like so many other sent-in treats.

My go-to recipe began with one in Susan Purdy's The Family Baker, which is probably my favorite baking book. Her recipes are true blue and never fail to please. Here is my adaptation of the recipe.

Morning Glory Muffins

1 cup packed Craisins (sweetened, dried cranberries)
1 cup crushed fresh or canned pineapple, drained
1 Granny Smith apple, peeled, cored, chopped
1/2 cup unsweetened shredded coconut
4 large carrots, peeled and grated to yield 2 cups
3 large eggs, at room temp
1 cup canola oil
1 1/4 cups sugar
2 tsp. vanilla extract
2 cups unsifted all-purpose flour
2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
2 tsp. ground cinnamon
demerara or sparkling sugar for topping

1. Preheat oven to 350 and coat muffin tins with baking spray or use paper liners.

2. In a large bowl, combine all the fruits, coconut and carrots. In another large bowl, whisk together the eggs, oil, sugar and vanilla. Place the sifter over this bowl, measure into it the flour, baking soda, salt and cinnamon, then all at once sift these ingredients directly onto the wet mixture. Stir everything together until just blended; do not overbeat. Stir in the fruit mixture.

3. Divide the batter among the muffin cups, filling almost to the top. Sprinkle the topping sugar on each muffin. Bake for 35 to 40 minutes, until the muffins rise, are crusty brown on top, and the top of the muffin springs back when touched. Remove the muffins from the oven and let cool in the pan for five minutes or so, then remove to a wire rack. Try to keep your mitts off the muffins for at least another 10 minutes - hot fruit can burn your mouth (voice of experience). Totally optional, yet heavenly: a dab of softened cream cheese on a warm muffin half.