Hummingbird cake is a Jamaican dessert that is typically made with flour, vegetable oil, bananas, pineapple, pecans, eggs, vanilla, sugar, salt, cinnamon, and leavening agents. It is usually served with cream cheese frosting. Often thought to have been invented in the late 1960s, the cake was originally called doctor bird cake, referring to a nickname for a Jamaican hummingbird variety known as red-billed streamertail.

Many people believe that the cake was named after the bird because the yellow streaks of banana are reminiscent of the bird’s plumage, while others say it is because the cake is sweet enough to attract hummingbirds. In 1968, the Jamaican tourist board wanted to attract tourists by sending press kits to the United States.

These press kits also contained a recipe for hummingbird cake, and it didn’t take long before the cake started to appear across the American South. Nowadays, the cake is more popular in the United States than in Jamaica.