Kitchen Experiments: The Fanciest Cake I've Baked

It dawned on me after my cookie post that I have yet to bake a traditional cake from scratch, which is weird. After some recipe searching, I decided to try out Magnolia Bakery's Hummingbird Cake*. A cake made with ripe bananas, pineapple, pecans and cream cheese frosting? There was basically no question, plus Andrew raves about it all the time because he's lucky enough to work near the Magnolia Bakery downtown.


My first time making homemade frosting was quick and painless. I'm sold! Homemade frosting is totally worth the extra effort. I ended up with a smaller amount than I'd hoped for, which was a bit of a bummer. I was dead set on decorating my cake like this beauty, but there's always next time.


As always, I was happy to use my gadgets. I mean, how fun is chopping pecans? Well, chopping pecans with an adorable little baby food processor is THE MOST FUN.


After allowing the cakes to cool, I started cutting down the tops to level them off. Now that took some patience. I had to keep telling myself there's no time to be a perfectionist. Why did I start baking at 8pm...?


I bought my first angled spatula to be fancy. It's totally not necessary, but I felt cool using it (I'm such a nerd). While cutting the excess cake to even out the shape I kept thinking what am I going to do with all these leftovers? They're still sitting in my fridge! Maybe I'll try cake balls.


Not too bad for my first crumb coat, though it seems people usually use less icing.


I was thrilled with the result, and it's wasn't just eye candy either! Be warned: This cake is extremely dense. It's incredibly rich, moist, and fresh tasting, but above all else, it is as dense as can be. I had to take half of it to work because there was no way Andrew and I could ever finish it. Everyone loved it!

*A word of advice if you follow the MB recipe: Don't forget to add your eggs! There is no mention of eggs anywhere other than in the ingredients list. I was about to pour my batter into my cake pans when I realized I had three eggs sitting on my counter.


Do you guys use all of your dishes when you cook and bake, too? Just me? Ok...