butternut squash muffins on a glowing day

What a gorgeous, glowing day.  The trees are still showing color, especially a heady yellow on the beech trees.  Being surrounded by the colors of autumn make me think of all those delicious squashes and pumpkins - and though I do tend to bake wildly and enthusiastically with canned pumpkin, I boldly ventured into using a fresh butternut squash last night.  

I peeled half of a large butternut, cut it into chunks, and simmered it until it was soft, then drained it and proceeded with the muffin recipe I had for sweet potato muffins.  What resulted was a dense, not-too-sweet muffin, moist and lighter in taste than my pumpkin muffins and a perfect breakfast muffin.  You can toast it, but there's no need for butter at all because of the butternut puree.  Delicious!



Butternut Squash muffins
Makes 12 regular size muffins.

First, prepare the butternut squash puree:

2 cups peeled butternut, cut into chunks
water to cover

Simmer the squash until tender, then drain and mash.



The muffins:

Preheat oven to 350F.
Place cupcake papers in a regular sized muffin tin.

1 stick (1/2 cup) unsalted butter, room temperature
3/4 cup sugar
2 extra large eggs
1 1/2 cups of the butternut mash
2 cups King Arthur all-purpose flour
2 t. baking powder
pinch of salt
pinch of cinnamon
pinch of nutmeg
chopped pecans for tops (optional)

Cream the butter and sugar in mixer bowl, then add the eggs and mix again.

Add the butternut puree, the flour and baking powder, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg, mix well, then use an ice cream scoop to scoop batter into a 12 muffin tin that you've lined with cupcake papers, 1 scoop per muffin.

Sprinkle with the chopped pecans if desired, and bake for 30 minutes, or until tops are firm when gently pressed in the middle. Because the muffins are so dense with puree, they need to bake the full 30 minutes, even if the tops are firm before that.

Remove to a cooling rack and let cool completely before storing or wrapping (or devouring!)