This incredible Hummingbird Pie harnesses the flavors of a classic Southern hummingbird cake in the form of a pie. With its coconut pecan crumb topping and pineapple and banana filling, it's a flavor bomb in pie form.
My pie adventure continues! You may recall that earlier this year I resolved to bake at least one pie a month for the rest of the year, and likely beyond. So far, I'm still going strong. I haven't posted every single pie I've made this year, although I've definitely posted a few of the highlights along the way.
One of my favorite summer fruit pies by far was this Blueberry Nectarine Pie. Meanwhile one that I fell in love with around the holidays last year (and may make again this year) was this luscious Peppermint Mousse Black Bottom Pie. There were so many other delicious pies, but these are a couple of the more memorable ones over the past 12 months.
I recently made another pie that falls at the top of my love list. It sounds like a peculiar combination, but just trust me on this. This Hummingbird Pie is based on a classic Southern cake by the same name.
The filling is comprised of diced pineapple, sliced bananas, chopped dried apricots, brown sugar, rum, and spices. It honestly sounds more tropical than Southern from the get go.
The filling is topped with a coconut pecan crumb, which continues the tropical theme with the coconut but adds just the right amount of Southern flair with a healthy dose of pecans.
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| Before baking |
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| After baking |
Since none of these pie ingredients are seasonal (the key ingredients grow in the tropics, not in my backyard), this is a great year-round pie recipe!
Seriously, I can't stress enough how absolutely fantastic this pie is. I'm a fan of Hummingbird Cake and now I'm an even bigger fan of Hummingbird Pie. This is definitely a pie I will be making again.
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Hummingbird Pie
Ingredients
Coconut Pecan Crumb:
- ¼ cup (20 grams) rolled oats
- ½ cup (62 grams) all-purpose flour
- 5 tablespoons (56 grams) packed light brown sugar
- 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- ½ teaspoon ground ginger
- pinch of ground or freshly grated nutmeg
- Pinch of fine salt
- 6 tablespoons (85 grams) unsalted butter, melted and cooled
- ¼ cup (20 grams) pecan pieces
- ½ cup (57 grams) sweetened coconut flakes
Pie:
- ½ recipe Magpie Dough for Flaky Piecrust chilled overnight (recipe follows)
- ½ cup (96 grams) packed light brown sugar
- 1 tablespoon cornstarch
- ¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg
- 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- ⅛ teaspoon fine salt
- 1 small pineapple cored, peeled, and cut into half-inch pieces (3 cups)
- 2 bananas peeled and cut into quarter-inch-thick slices
- ¼ cup (42 grams) diced dried apricots
- 2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice
- 2 tablespoons Jamaican rum
- Vanilla ice cream for serving
Instructions
- For the coconut pecan crumb: Use a food processor to grind the oats, pulsing the machine until the oats resemble coarse cornmeal.
- Whisk the ground oats, flour, sugar, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and salt together in a medium bowl. Add the melted butter and mix with your fingers or a fork until small clumps form. Add the pecans and coconut and mix lightly. Chill the crumb for 15 minutes before topping the pie.
- For the pie: Lightly flour a smooth work surface and a rolling pin.
- Take a chilled disk of dough out of the fridge. Give it a couple of firm squeezes just to say hello, then unwrap it and set it on the floured work surface.
- Set the pin crosswise on the dough and press down firmly, making a nice deep channel across the full width of the disk. Turn the disk 180 degrees and repeat, making a second indentation, forming a plus sign.
- Use your rolling pin to press down each of the wedges, turning the dough 45 degrees each time. This will give you the beginnings of a thick circle.
- Now, rolling from the center outward and rotating the dough a quarter turn to maintain a circular shape, roll the dough out to a 13-inch circle with an even thickness of ¼ inch.
- Set your 9-inch (23-cm) pie pan alongside the circle of dough. Brush off any loose flour, carefully fold the dough circle in half, transfer it to the pan, and unfold.
- At this point, the dough will be lying across rather than fitted into the pan. Now, without stretching the dough, set the dough down into the pan so that it is flush up against the sides and bottom. The best way to do this is to gingerly lift the dough and gently shift it around so that it settles into the pan bit by bit. Use a very light touch to help cozy it in.
- To flute the edge, fold the overhang under to form a 1-inch wall that rests on the lip of the pan with the seam slightly below the pan’s top edge. Go around the edge of the pan and use a very light touch to firm up the wall to an even thickness from the bottom to the top and all the way around. Flute the edge of the crust at about 1-inch intervals, pressing from the inside with the knuckle of your index finger while supporting on the outside with the thumb and index finger of your opposite hand. Don’t pinch the dough, you want the flute to look like a thick rope.
- Transfer the crust to the refrigerator to chill while you make your filling. Alternatively, at this point the crust can be covered tightly in plastic wrap and refrigerated for up to 3 days or double-wrapped and frozen for up to 2 months (defrost overnight in the refrigerator before filling and baking or prebaking, or at room temperature for 30 minutes).
- Preheat the oven to 375°F with a rack in the center. Line a rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper.
- Whisk the brown sugar, cornstarch, nutmeg, cinnamon, and salt together in a small bowl.
- In a large bowl, combine the pineapple, bananas, dried apricots, lemon juice, and rum, tossing lightly to mix. Sprinkle in the sugar mixture and toss well, coating the fruit and thoroughly moistening the cornstarch and sugar.
- Retrieve the prepared pie shell from the refrigerator and set the pan on the parchment-lined baking sheet. Scoop the filling into the pie shell and top with the crumb. Transfer the baking sheet to the oven and bake the pie 25 minutes, then rotate the baking sheet, lower the oven temperature to 350°F, and bake another 25 to 30 minutes, or until the juices are bubbling (mine baked an additional 15 minutes beyond that). Tent the top with foil if the crumb starts to over-brown.
- Set the baking sheet on a wire rack and let the pie cool and set, uncovered, at room temperature overnight (or up to 3 days) (mine cooled about 6 hours, which was plenty of time for it to set while retaining its flaky crust), before slicing and serving with vanilla ice cream.
Notes
Nutrition
*All nutritional information is based on third-party calculations and should be considered estimates. Actual nutritional content will vary with brands used, measuring methods, portion sizes and more.*
The Best Dough for Flaky Piecrust
Ingredients
- 2 ½ cups (312 grams) all-purpose flour
- 2 tablespoons (28 grams) granulated sugar
- 1 teaspoon (6 grams) salt
- ¾ cup (170 grams) cold unsalted butter cut into ¼-inch cubes and frozen
- ¼ cup (60 grams) vegetable shortening preferably in baking stick form, frozen, cut into ¼-inch pieces, and put back in the freezer
- ½ cup plus 1 tablespoon (130 grams) ice-cold water
Instructions
- Combine the flour, sugar, and salt in the bowl of a food processor and pulse 3 times to blend. Scatter the frozen butter cubes over the flour mixture. Pulse the machine 5 to 7 times, holding each pulse for a 5 full seconds, to cut all of the butter into pea-size pieces.
- Scatter the pieces of frozen shortening over the flour-and-butter mixture. Pulse the machine 4 more 1-second pulses to blend the shortening with the flour. The mixture will resemble coarse cornmeal, but will be a bit more floury and riddled with pale butter bits (no pure-white shortening should be visible).
- Turn the mixture out into a large mixing bowl, and make a small well in the center. If you find a few butter clumps that are closer to marble size than pea size (about ¼ inch in diameter), carefully pick them out and give them a quick smoosh with your fingers. Pour the cold water into the well.
- Use a curved bowl scraper to lightly scoop the flour mixture up and over the water, covering the water to help get the absorption started. Continue mixing by scraping the flour up from the sides and bottom of the bowl into the center, rotating the bowl as you mix, and occasionally pausing to clean off the scraper with your finger or the side of the bowl, until the mixture begins to gather into clumps but is still very crumbly. (If you are working in very dry conditions and the ingredients remain very floury and refuse to clump together at this stage, add another tablespoon of ice-cold water.)
- Lightly gather the clumps with your fingers and use your palm to fold over and press the dough a few times (don’t knead! —just give the dough a few quick squishes), until it just begins to come together into a single large mass.
- For single- and double-crust pies, mini pies, potpies, or hand pies: Divide the dough into 2 equal portions, gently shape each portion into a flat disk 1 ½ to 2 inches thick, and wrap each tightly with plastic wrap. For quiche, leave the dough in one piece, flatten it into a single large disk 1 ½ to 2 inches thick, and wrap tightly with plastic wrap.
- Refrigerate the dough for at least 8 hours or up to 3 days before rolling. (The dough may discolor slightly. No worries. This is merely oxidization and will not affect the flavor or appearance of your finished piecrust.)
Notes
- The wrapped, chilled dough can be put in a freezer bag and frozen for up to 2 months. Defrost overnight in the refrigerator before rolling.
- Adapted from Magpie
*All nutritional information is based on third-party calculations and should be considered estimates. Actual nutritional content will vary with brands used, measuring methods, portion sizes and more.*
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