Let's Get Acorn-y

A Squash Baked Good Experiment

---

Okay, let's get real. I love squash of all types, and usually I am content to roast any winter squash in the oven, drizzle a little olive oil on the member of the Cucurbita family, and nom nom away like a little weaner pig at a trough. However, from time to time I ask myself these what if? questions. An example would be: Hey Kat! What would it be like to have a slice of cinnamon flavored squash cake? I mean, you know you love snickerdoodles and pumpkin bread, why not use some pureed acorn squash and make some sort of cake or muffin thing with it?

Of course, this type of hypothetical musing usually means that I end up with a very messy kitchen and something that is usually passable in the ingestion department. Mockery of my mess making and risk taking almost always ensues as well, things are usually uttered like, Dad! Mom's got the food processor out again! or Dad! Mom dyed the cat with green food coloring! That was an accident. Okay, it was pretty cool too.

Anyway, I started off my fantastic Squash-Voyage by washing my two acorn squashes and giving them the Friday The Thirteenth treatment. Some people have pretty fancy chef's knives. Mine is a super excellent model that I found in my barn's kitchen when I cleaned it out after moving onto the farm long ago. It keeps working and I keep not spending money on a fancy chef's knife. Win, win!

---

After gutting the acorns, I rubbed some butter on their exposed flesh and placed them cut side up onto a baking sheet. Into a 375 degree Fahrenheit oven went my little squashes, and while they were cooking I did a scintillating round of grammar practice and a missing variable math review with my fiesty little pineapples. I honestly think the only thing missing today was my son's polite behavior neuron transmitter, I had to tap him on his baby gorilla head with my pencil more than one time, and yes, I had to jump to reach. Heathen.

This derp-pile kept poking its head underneath my armpit as I tried to type....

With grammar and math underway for the day, I proceeded to gather the needed ingredients for my squash-periment. And yes, it does occur to me that I butcher lots of words grammatically and do so almost as well as I butchered those acorn squash. I'm sure that this fact is the supreme reason behind the fact that I am so super qualified to educate my children. Dangit! Now I am employing a heavy dose of sarcasm as well. Committing that fallacy discounts everything that I have to say. Oh well, I will endure.

Back to the squash cake-in I shall now go. I follow no one diet paradigm, for I believe that extremism in any form is not a good thing. Thus, the way I eat is pretty much a mish mash of many of the food trends out there. I am going to say that about 70% of the things I ingest are in the low carb, Keto, Paleo, Trim Healthy Mama S spectrum of food items, but I also love a big old slice of gluten filled pizza or munching on a cheeseburger the size of my head. I've found if I eat real, whole food most of the time, fast a bit every few days, and limit the amount of sugar I ingest, that I can pretty much eat whatever I want on occasion and not attain the carcass size of a bloated cow corpse.

That said, after a few years of not eating a lot of sugar, I have found that I prefer stevia and erythritol sweetened desserts to the white sugary alternative. It's like my tastebuds evolved or something! So, today's squash cake thing was made with erythritol and stevia blend as a sweetener and low carb in design.

Before I finish the visual and verbal how to of my cake-in composition, I suppose I should explain what the heck a Cake-in is. It's a baked good that is somewhere between a cake and muffin in texture. My little squash creations were not quite muffin, yet they weren't quite a cupcake either, thus the cake-in designation.

Using a food processor that my grandma picked up at a yard sale for me when I was a teenager more than a few years back, I pureed the squash, just look at that gorgeous autumnal color!

I then proceeded to add a bunch of ingredients together that sounded like they would complement the squash and taste cakey or muffin-like. Instead of beating the concoction in my stand mixer, I opted to whisk the batter together.

To my infinite surprise, the batter actually looked pretty good!

I used coconut flour in the batter with the squash, and even though that substance has silica gel packet-like moisture sucking ability, I kind of figured that most squash containing baked goods were pretty moist anyway, so I could get away with using all coconut flour.

The batter was more like a well mixed brick mortar than batter, but for once I didn't wear a bunch of batter when I loaded the cupcake liners into my muffin tin. I mean, that was a Kat-cookery first right there!

Most of my muffins and cupcakes take between 14 and 20 minutes to cook depending on the recipe. This recipe took 25 minutes to cook at 350 Fahrenheit. I feel the longer baking time was due to the coconut flour and way more moisture than the norm.

I unwrapped the cake-ins for their portrait because I thought they looked like little flowers. Also, I am sort of a silly-head.

My acorn squash cake-ins are a little funny to gaze upon, but dang did they ever taste awesome. I took some cream cheese and one of them for my snack at work today, and I inhaled that thing!

Acorn Squash Cake-ins

2 cups of acorn squash puree
1/2 cup coconut flour
1/2 cup butter (1 stick)
3 eggs
1/2 cup erythritol+stevia blend (I used Pyure)
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon ginger
1/4 teaspoon allspice
1 teaspoon cinnamon

Place all ingredients in a mixing bowl and mix until well combined.

Scoop batter into greased or lined muffin tins, and place into a preheated 350 degree Fahrenheit oven for 25 minutes. The cake-ins will still look a bit under done, but will set up nicely once removed and cooled. This recipe made 16 standard size, sort of pumpkin bread tasting cake and muffin-like things.

---

And as always when I am in a hurry or feeling rather lazy, all of the images in this post were taken on the author's pumpkin pie spice scented iPhone.

---

Want to read more @Generikat posts?

---

Click Here!