Hummingbird cake is my obsession. I love banana desserts(get your minds out of the gutter), and the concept of hummingbird cake, being this Southern hummingbird cake with Caribbean roots, is just so fascinating to me. Plus the name is just so pleasant and cute. My version of hummingbird cake usually is made with this brown butter-banana cake, a ginger-pineapple cream cheese frosting, a miso caramel, and the whole thing is topped with toasted coconut, toasted pecans, and crystalized pineapple pieces. However, like the description of this recipe states, this version is egg free. With the insane egg shortage(which continues to depress me), I have started to figure out how to convert some of my favorite recipes to egg-free variants so that I can continue baking them without shorting my own dwindling egg supply. Fortunately for me, I started as a vegan cupcake baker, and vegan banana cake was something I learned how to do back in my mid-teens. This recipe is NOT vegan(it still uses a cream cheese frosting, the cake has brown butter in it, and I slathered the whole thing in a miso de leche instead of just the miso caramel), just in case anyone was assuming, but because of that vegan cake R&D I did back in the day, I knew how to make this recipe egg-free. With my vegan cake batter, I typically use a combination of vinegar and baking soda, which has a chemical reaction that binds the cake together in place of eggs. And fortunately, since the cake already used minimal egg to begin with, this recipe was a very quick and easy conversion! That being said, I did not want to just copy and paste the entire recipe. So I made a few other modifications too, just to make this cake stand apart from the other one.

The sponge itself is very similar to the original, but with a higher ratio of banana, and no usage of the pineapple buttermilk; I did not have any pineapple juice on-hand when I was making this recipe, so I omitted it from any of the components that used it in my original recipe. The higher ratio of bananas is offset with less wet ingredients in general, giving this recipe a more carrot cake-like consistency, since I based this one kind of off of my carrot cake recipe, where the only wet ingredients were grated carrot, the fats, the sugars, and the vinegar. Except in this case, sub out the carrot with super ripe, dark as my soul, bananas. I also made this cake a single layer cake, but a very tall sponge layer as well, similar to like a pound cake. I slathered the top of the cake in miso de leche, made from mixing dulce de leche with miso paste. I did already post a recipe on how I made miso de leche from scratch, which you are more than welcome to reference, but if you are in a time pinch, just use premade dulce de leche and flavor it with the miso. The frosting is a cream cheese frosting that is lightened with whipped cream, just to give it a cloud-like, melt-in-your-mouth finish. And in addition to my usual garnishes of toasted pecans, coconut flakes, and candied pineapple cubes, I also used some banana chips, just to reinforce that banana flavor and add another crunchy texture! Hopefully, this egg shortage will be over soon, but in the mean time, I took this as a fun challenge to revisit one of my signature recipes(takes me back to the pandemic when I experimented heavily with vegan and gluten-free baking due to flour, egg, and butter shortages).

Makes 2 6-inch cakes, or 12 to 16 servings:
For the cake:
1 stick unsalted butter
1/3 cup pecans
1/4 cup coconut flakes
a pinch of cinnamon
3 ripened bananas
2 tbsp canola oil
a pinch of salt
1/2 cup dark brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
2 tbsp vinegar
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder

In a pan, start by heating up the unsalted butter with the pecans until the butter is fully browned. Add to that the coconut flakes and cinnamon, and toast the coconut flakes in the brown butter until brown as well. In a bowl, mix the bananas, brown butter-coconut-pecan mixture, oil, salt, sugars, and vinegar until a paste forms. Fold into that the flour and baking powder to form your batter. Divide the batter evenly between 2 6-inch ring molds and bake at 350 degrees F for 35 minutes. Allow the cakes to fully cool before attempting to unmold and decorate.

For the miso de leche:
14oz dulce de leche
1 tbsp white miso paste

In a bowl, mix together the ingredients to form your miso de leche.

For the cream cheese frosting:
8oz cream cheese
2oz miso de leche
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 tsp ground ginger
3oz heavy cream, whipped stiff

In a bowl, whip the cream cheese, miso de leche, vanilla extract, and ginger until smooth and spreadable. Fold into that the heavy cream to form your frosting.

For garnish:
Toasted coconut flakes
Toasted pecan pieces
Candied pineapple cubes
Banana chips

To start, pour divvy up half of your miso de leche, spreading that onto the tops of each of the cakes. Then sprinkle on top of that the coconut flakes, pecan pieces, pineapple cubes, and banana chips. Then spread on top of that your cream cheese frosting, and swirl into that the rest of your dulce de leche. Finish the tops with more coconut flakes, pecan pieces, pineapple cubes, and banana chips.