Hummingbird cupcakes with marmalade icing

I made these cupcakes due to two mistakes, first I bought the wrong type of tinned pineapple for making pizza, second I poured 5 times more crushed pineapple into the cake batter instead of the required amount.  These sound like a kitchen disaster was approaching.....

I used the pineapple for the pizza anyway and it was not too bad.  Then the rest of the tin had to be consumed and I remembered there was a recipe of hummingbird cupcake using it.  The last time I made this cake, it didn't really reach my expectation, it's probably the recipe's fault. It also need a lot of ingredients to make this cake that you really need a plan to shop all the things you need.  So here we go, I'm just lucky to have all the ingredients at home, including the ripe bananas.

With a high hope of having another round of a trial of the recipe, I ended up with a puddle of cake batter by adding too much pineapple.  Should I add more ingredients to make more cupcakes or should I add more flour to thicken the batter?  The later option was a good choice as the cupcakes came out moist with a good balance of flavour.  My husband loved it and asked me what's in the cake, he named a few but couldn't name them all... so I bet him and won the game of naming ingredients.

Most icing for hummingbird cake used cream cheese, this one used homemade marmalade with whipped butter cream and that was the killer part of this cake!  It would be a great cake to serve at a high tea on Mother's Day!

Have you ever make something amazing by mistake?


Hummingbird cupcakes with marmalade icing

125g plain flour
125g self-raising flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
125g caster sugar
115ml sunflower oil
2 eggs
150g mashed banana
1 1/2 tablespoon grated orange zest
60g grated carrot
60g desiccated coconut
440g tin of crushed pineapple

For the icing:
58g unsalted butter, softened
75g icing sugar, sieved
1 tablespoon orange juice
1 tablespoon marmalade

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 175c. Place the muffin tin with paper cases.
2. Beat the oil and sugar till creamy than add in one egg at a time and beat until well mixed.
3. Add in sieved flour, baking powder and cinnamon into the egg mixture and stir.  Then add in the rest of the ingredients and stir till combined.
4. Spoon the batter into the cases until 3/4 full.  Bake for 25 minutes or until cooked.  Cool the cake in the tin for 5 minutes.
5. Remove the cupcakes and cool the cake on a rack before icing.
6. For the icing: beat butter and icing sugar till light and fluffy, add the orange juice and marmalade and stir.  Smear the icing onto the cupcakes before taking a big bite!