I recently discovered a cooking show that is new to me, and I am so happy that I did. Jamie at Home is a fantastic show, featuring Jamie Oliver, a very well known chef in England who has been instrumental at improving the school lunch program there. He is a rustic chef, who cooks with whole foods, natural ingredients (many right from the garden) and cooking tools that the average chef likely has on hand. This year, as you know if you are a regular reader here, I have been indulging in loads of winter squashes, most of which have been grown by my favorite local farm, Fully Belly. When Jamie Oliver prepared Squash Muffins, I had to give them a try. The biggest surprise about this recipe, is that he prepared them using raw squash with the peel still on! Because we are silly in the USA and don’t use the metric system in the kitchen, I brought my food scale out of my office (where I use it to calculate postage most of the time) and used it for its intended purpose. My daughter wasn’t too fond of the results, but everyone else in the family was thrilled. Don’t forget to Call The Kids into the kitchen to help you on this one. They will be so surprised at the use of unpeeled squash in the recipe, and will love to see its texture after it has been pulverized in the food processor!

 

Butternut squash muffins

400g butternut squash, deseeded and roughly chopped

350g light soft brown sugar

4 large eggs

sea salt

300g plain flour, unsifted

2 tsp baking powder

a handful of walnuts

1 tsp ground cinnamon

175ml extra virgin olive oil

 

For the frosted cream topping

zest of 1 clementine

zest of 1 lemon and

juice of 1/2 a lemon

140ml soured cream

2 heaped tablespoons icing sugar, sifted

1 vanilla pod

split lengthways and seeds scraped out

 

Preheat the oven to 180°C / 350 degrees F. Line your muffin tins with paper cases. Whiz the squash in a food processor until finely chopped. Add the sugar, and crack in the eggs. Add a pinch of salt, the flour, baking powder, walnuts, cinnamon and olive oil and whiz together until well beaten. Fill the paper cases with the cake mixture. Bake in the preheated oven for 20 to 25 minutes. Remove from the oven and leave the cakes to cool on a wire rack. Make your runny frosted topping. Place most of the clementine zest, all the lemon zest and the lemon juice in a bowl. Add the soured cream, icing sugar and vanilla seeds and mix well. Taste and adjust the amount of lemon juice or icing sugar to balance the sweet and sour. Put into the fridge until your cakes have cooled down, then spoon the topping on to the cakes. Sprinkle with the rest of the clementine zest sprinkled over.

 

Michelle Stern owns What's Cooking, a SF Bay Area business that offers healthy cooking classes, birthday parties and educational gifts for kids.  Try our week of free What's Cooking Weekly menus.  For more information, please visit us online at: www.whatscooking.info