Squirrel Cake, Anyone?

It was supposed to be Hummingbird Cake, not Squirrel Cake, but nobody told that to the little creature who showed up on my window ledge to help with the baking.

Maybe he knew they were going to turn into sunflowers!

So this weekend, David's folks came up for a visit and, because I love to come up with fun projects I don't have time for while neglecting housework I should be doing, I decided to make hummingbird cupcakes (for Pops) decorated like sunflowers (for Zannie). Sort of a Happy Birthday to Y'all and Thanks For All the Help.

If you will all pardon my self congratulations, I think they came out looking pretty cute and the cake tasted OK, but I wasn't expecting it to be quite as banana-y as it was. The banana totally overwhelmed the coconut, pineapple and pecans that were also in the cake and sounded so tasty to me. For my money, it might as well have just been banana cake...and I got my recipe from Martha Stewart so it should have been just perfect! If that is what Hummingbird cake is supposed to taste like, then I'll stick to Grandma Johnson's Banana Bread! The flowers looked OK, but that sure is a lot of colored icing - maybe a bit too much.

All in all it was a fun experiment and I might try silly overly decorated cupcakes again, but only for a party or a bigger group - no one wants to eat more than one with all that icing. Oh yeah, and with so much icing and cookies too, it seems like sticking to a basic cake might be smarter....but at least the squirrels seemed interested in my experiment.