At the end of a fairly awful week for everybody here in Ireland, it was nice (for me personally) to be reminded through American friends that it’s important to give thanks for the small things.

Despite economic meltdowns,  I for one am very thankful for my wonderful family, BF and friends.  Duh.

Amidst a long list of inherently insignificant things I am extremely thankful for are hot showers, Fade Steet, Following Fade Street, having a half workday on Fridays and food.  Always food.

This Friday afternoon, having left work at midday, I set upon making Butternut Squash Muffins from Jamie At Home.  You can find the original recipe here but I made a smaller batch by dividing the recipe in two and tweaked it a bit to suit my savoury-loving tooth.  They were delish.

This is a great recipe for using leftover bits of butternut squash, especially when making a smaller batch.  A little bit of squash goes a long way in this recipe.

What you need for 6-8 muffins

About 200g of butternut squash, de-seeeded, peeled and finely grated

175g light brown sugar (I used caster sugar as it’s what I had to hand)

2 large free-range eggs

150g plain flour, unsifted

1 heaped teaspoon of baking powder

A handful of walnuts, finely chopped

A handful of raisins

1 teaspoon of ground cinnamon

87.5 ml of olive oil – 85ml will probably be fine

Jamie O has a lovely looking recipe for a zesty icing topping for these muffins but I didn’t go for it because I was looking for a more coffee break or breakfast style muffin.  Again, having a savoury rather than sweet tooth, sometimes I find icing far too sickening.

Anyway, start  by heating your oven to 180°C/350°F/gas 4.

If you have muffin cases, then line your tin with them.  If not, send a few minutes making them out of greaseproof/baking paper.

(You can see that a few of my muffins are wrapped in baking paper.  The original recipe called for muffin cases which I didn’t have to hand.  So, I began to cut rectangle out of baking paper to form into circles by folding them into my muffin tin.  This was a bit of a palava and just too much of a kerfuffle for a lazy chef like me to do.  So I just greased the muffin tray and poured the mixture directly in.

This was a mistake.

As you can see, the muffin kept a good chunk of the muffin for itself.  So definitely use muffin/cupcake paper cases or fashion your own out of greaseproof paper, which honestly is not that big of a deal – I’m just exceptionally lazy.)

ANYWAY – line your muffin tray as you see fit.

To make your muffin mixture, add your finely grated uncooked butternut squash to a big mixing bowl.  Add the sugar and mix well – don’t worry it will be clumpy at this point.  Now add your eggs and give everything a really good mix.  It will start to look more mixturey now.

Now add a pinch of salt, your unsifted flour, your baking powder, your chopped walnuts, your raisins, cinnamon and finally your olive oil.  Give it a good mix so everything’s combined and you have a nice gooey mixture.

Now pour your mixture into your muffin tray cases.  Pop into the oven and bake for about 20 to 25 minutes.  You can check to see if they’re done by sticking a knife into the muffin.  If it comes out clean and not sticky, then you’re good to go.

Take your muffins out of your tray and let them cool for a bit on a wire rack.  These were lovely with coffee and without the icing topping, as they’re already sweet from the butternut squash and all that lovely sugar.

Yum!

TUNE

As I was baking these on Friday afternoon, I listened to the fairly chilled State.ie Mixtape

Categories: Baking