Hummingbird Cake Recipe – Vegan, Dairy Free & Gluten Free

So one of my most favourite cakes to make before I became Vegan was the Hummingbird Cake. For the uninitiated, this is a moist, delicious cake that has mashed banana and crushed pineapple in it with a cream cheese frosting.

Making hummingbird cake gluten free was pretty easy. (I was diagnosed with Coeliac and was eating gluten free for 7 years before I went Vegan). However, when I went Vegan I didn’t bother to make this for awhile, mostly because at the time I didn’t have access to a good Vegan Cream Cheese where I lived and also just because I forgot about it.

Recently though I was super excited to discover that my local Woolworths has started adding in more of a variety of vegan products and one of them being a Scottish brand of Vegan Cream Cheese called Sheese. I excitedly went into Woolies to grab my first container to try and was sad to see that it had already sold out. Sad but also excited that it had, had such a good response in sales. I went in every few days for a couple of weeks to see if it had been restocked and FINALLY there it was!!

Can I tell you? The flavour is on point!! It tastes exactly how I remember cream cheese tasting although it’s been about 2 years since I last had any so I’ll let you be the judge of that. The texture is also perfect. The only thing I WILL say is that this does not beat well. When I originally used to make Cream Cheese Frosting using the dairy version I would whip it up with some icing sugar and it used to be so thick and creamy, however with these cream cheese I find it just liquifies.

Having said that the icing still was totally delicious and it did set, it was just more of a consistency of a butter icing then a cream cheese frosting. So my suggestion would be to just manually combine the icing sugar and cream cheese rather than using the beaters. Or if you don’t mind a thinner icing then go ahead and beat it like I did.

The other point I wanted to make is that you can add in chopped walnuts or pecans to the cake batter before cooking if you like your cakes having a little bit of a crunchy, nutty texture to it. I didn’t think of adding it till it was too late so instead, I sprinkled some across the top of the icing which made it equally delicious. There’s something about the nutty texture crunch of the walnut, next to the creaminess of the icing and the fruitiness of the banana and pineapple that makes this cake work so well together.

I will say this is a very moist cake because there are so many wet ingredients in it. So don’t think you have stuffed up if the cake is super moist. You could possibly add in more plain flour and self raising to balance out the wet ingredients more but in all honesty, I’ve never tried it to see. I’ve always been happy with how it turns out. So try this gluten free hummingbird cake that’s been veganised and let me know what you think.

If you would like to see the video version of me making this recipe then click here:

For the written recipe then scroll further down.

Ingredients needed

Ingredients in the bowl ready to combine

Cake before it’s iced.

RECIPE

Prep Time: 20 Minutes  Cook Time: 1 hour

Serves: 8

Ingredients:

How to Make the Cake:

• Preheat the oven to moderate 180c (350F/Gas 4). Lightly grease and line a 20cm (8 inch) square cake tin although you can use a round tin if you wish.
• Sift the Plain Flour, Self Raising Flour, Cinnamon and bicarbonate of soda into the bowl. (Most flours these days are pretty well sifted so if you don’t have a sifter then skip that part, just the original recipe I based my recipe from suggested it.)
• Stir in the Caster sugar and make a well in the centre of the dry ingredients.
• If you haven’t already mix up your egg replacer to make the equivalent of 2 eggs. (I used Orgran Egg Replacer which for 2 eggs will need 2 tsp of egg replacer to 4 Tbsp of water and whisk well).
• Add to the centre of the dry ingredients the crushed pineapple, mashed banana, vegetable oil and egg replacer. Stir until just combined.
• Pour into prepared cake pan and bake for 1 hour or until a skewer inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean.
• Leave in the cake pan for 10 minutes before turning out and cooling on a wire rack.

How to make the Icing:

• Mix in the icing sugar with the cream cheese until well combined. SEE NOTE BELOW.
• Then add in the vanilla essence and mix.
• Then ice your cake and and decorate it with the walnuts and shredded Coconut.

NOTE: As mentioned above depending what vegan cream cheese you use, if you want your frosting to be nice and thick it might be easier to manually mix the icing instead of beating. The Sheese vegan cream cheese that I used, was the first time I had ever tried it and I found that although the flavour is delicious, when I tried to beat it with the icing sugar it liquified instead of thickened. I can’t verify if other Vegan cream cheeses will do the same as I’ve only tried the Sheese brand so far but be sure to let me know your tips and tricks in the comments below.