Hummingbird Cupcakes

Still caught up in the whole NYC thing. Still totally bamboozled by the coolest city I have ever been in. It simply never occured to me that Hummingbird Cupcakes could be made anywhere else in the world but at the Magnolia Bakery in West Village. It has become kind of my New York 'thing.' One taste and I was totally sold...and hooked. They are the kind of taste you can get a 'hankering' for on a cold winter night when nothing else will do. Hummingbird cupcakes...heavy with the moist fruit of crushed bananas, pineapple, coconut and pecans....covered with a creamy, real sugar cream cheese frosting. Yum. So, imagine my surprise when I ran across a recipe for 'Hummingbird Cake' in a large collection of cake recipes emailed to me by my sister. And imagine the equally stunned surprise of my children when they awoke to the smell of baking cupcakes this sunny fall Saturday morning. (DH was at work....serves him right for working on a Saturday!) Cupcakes they were not allowed to touch until they had been frosted with a buttery yellow cream cheese frosting.

But now I am crushed. I just did a web search. The Magnolia Bakery does not have a 'secret' recipe for these decadent items. Naturally, Martha Stewart has her own spin on them. With dried pineapple flower adornments. It's an old southern recipe apparently. And the bakery even has it's own cookbook. There are no 'secrets'. You can buy them. Sigh.

But mine turned out really, really good actually. Not quite as heavy with fruit as The Magnolia's. And of course I haven't managed to master the Magnolia way of frosting with that cool little swirl....yet. But right now I have a counter full of the things. Gotta do something with them. Ice cold glass of milk anyone?