“A party without cake is just a meeting." -Julia Child
Let's talk about this cake for a minute. Hummingbird cake was created in Jamaica, and is named after the island’s national bird, the scissors-tail hummingbird. The name of the bird came from the way its long beak probes flowers, like a doctor inspecting a patient. Locally, they call the hummingbird the “Doctor bird,” so it’s fitting that most people in Jamaica call this cake “Doctor bird” cake. Some say the cake was named after the bird because it was sweet enough to attract hummingbirds (who eat only nectar), while others say that the yellow streaks of pineapple and banana in the cake were evocative of the bird’s plumage. Either way, it’s delicious!
In 1968, the Jamaican tourist board sent press kits to the U.S. that included a few recipes from the island, including one for the Doctor bird cake. Over the next few years, similar recipes started to crop up in local papers and community cookbooks across the South under various names, including the prophetic “Cake that doesn’t last.” Most food historians agree the first printed recipe for Hummingbird cake was by Mrs. L H Wiggin of Greensboro, NC (less than an hour down I-85 from our HQ). She supplied the recipe to Southern Living magazine in February 1978, but there are countless references to the cake in county fair reports and baking competitions across southern America that predate 1978. Wiggin’s recipe was a hit with readers and won the Favorite Cake Award later that same year at the Kentucky State Fair. It was later voted Southern Living's favorite recipe in 1990 and was noted as the most requested recipe in the magazine's history. Click here for the cake recipe on SouthernLiving.com.
We’ll always have a special love for carrot cake around here, but when the birds get active this time of year, all we can think about is Hummingbird cake. We think it offers the perfect flavor profile for the warming, sunnier weather of spring – toasty, crunchy, infused with tropical fruits, and with the perfect amount of sweet spice. For this Limited Batch of Hummingbird Cake Almond & Pecan Butter, we blend fresh-roasted heirloom Mission almond butter with pan-toasted Organic pecans, Organic vegan white chocolate, pineapple, Organic maple syrup, cinnamon, allspice, and Jacobsen Sea Salt.
This nut butter recipe was one of our most popular R&D batches of 2022, and we are grateful to all of you who asked us to bring it back!
Available now through the end of June 2024.