Butternut Squash Muffins with Pecans

Cooking with leftovers today! These muffins are positively luscious ... sweet and moist and perfect with ice cold milk ... I played with Nigella's maple and pecan muffin recipe that comes from her Feast cookbook. The resulting muffins could pass as cupcakes if you iced them, but we're just dusting them with confectioner's sugar and having them with some butter slathered on.


Easy and fast, if you have a small container of leftover roasted squash. I used butternut squash because I like it's deep orange color and fuller winter squash flavour. It had some olive oil and salt and pepper on it from roasting, but one would never know after it gets squished coarsely and added to the muffin batter.  Here's the recipe ... see what you think.

Oh... and how cute is this old milk bottle that I found at the consignment store? It's from a dairy down in East Longmeadow, Massachusetts ...probably from the 60's anyway. I thought the message was a good one!

Butternut Squash and Maple Muffins with Pecans

Ingredients:

125 g. light brown sugar

125 ml maple syrup

80 ml canola oil

1 large egg

250 ml low-fat buttermilk

2 tsp. vanilla extract

225 g. roasted squash, coarsely crushed

300 g. all-purpose flour

50 g. wheat germ

2 tsp. baking powder

1 tsp. baking soda

½ tsp. allspice

¼ tsp. nutmeg

75 g. chopped pecans

Making the Muffins:

1. Preheat the oven to 375° F. Grease muffin tins – either a 12 muffin tin or a 6 giant muffin tin.
2. Place the brown sugar, maple syrup and canola oil in a deep bowl and whisk briskly to combine.
3. Add the egg, vanilla, and buttermilk and whisk to make a smooth liquid.
4. Turn in the squash and stir in.
5. In a separate bowl, whisk together all the dry ingredients except the nuts.
6. Add all at once to the liquid ingredients and stir briskly just until the batter forms.
7. Fold in the nuts.
8. Spoon the batter into the muffin tins and bake for 18 to 25 minutes … until a cake tester comes clean.
9. Remove and let the muffins rest in the pan for five minutes. Then, gently remove them to a rack to cool.

Note: Muffins can be dusted with confectioner’s sugar or iced …