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Saturday, October 9, 2010

Butternut Squash Muffins


Do you like me from this side of view.... Orrr..


This side of view....... Or do you like me undressed???



Tell me you want to eat me......

Awwww... Why la!!! Don't be so hasty... savour me slowly...
I'm always here, but

NOT FOR LONG!!!!!!

The muffins smell so good when they were baking. The aroma was filling up my head. When the buzzer beeped, I quickly removed them from the oven, and when they have cooled down slightly, I quickly ate one. The walnuts, vanilla and butternut squash was such good combination, the muffin tasted oh so good.

With muffins being a quick bread, it is always leavened with lots and lots of baking powder. Something that I do not wish to consume too much. The baking powder that we now mostly use contains aluminium in the acidic compound of the leavening and it is linked to Alzhiemers. Do read about it here.

So, I changed the method to creaming, and whacked the eggs with the pumpkin in the blender so that I can reduce the baking powder that is required.

You may substitute butternut squash with pumpkins as they really taste pretty much the same. And I’ll label anything with butternut squash on my blog as pumpkins as well.


Butternut squash muffins recipe
adapted from Jamie Oliver
Makes 12 muffins

300gm raw butternut squash , peeled weight, cut into small cubes, (those local long necked pumpkins are actually butternut squash) 
3 eggs
150gm light brown sugar (greatly reduced from original recipe)
100gm butter
Seeds from 1 vanilla pod / 1tsp vanilla extract (original recipe called for cinnamon)
230gm all purpose flour
1 heaped tsp baking powder
50gm chopped walnuts, chopped

1. Preheat oven at 170/180C. Line a 12 hole muffin tin with paper liners.
2. Place eggs and cubed squash into the blender and whizz it for 2 minutes.
3. Sift flour and baking powder, set aside.
4. Beat butter, sugar and vanilla seeds for 2 minutes until pale and fluffy.
5. Put in half of squash, mix until smooth. Put in half of flour, mix on low speed until smooth.
6. Put the all the squash, and all of the flour and mix until smooth.
7. Fold in chopped walnuts.
8. Spoon batter into lined muffin tins.
9. Bake for 30 minutes or until skewer comes out clean.


I made the frosty topping(based loosely on the original recipe), but in the end I didn’t use it, because these muffins were already a star on their own. I never eat 2 muffins in a row, but these were so good, that.. gosh, I almost wanted to have my third. But I told myself.. no no… 2 is a company, 3 is a crowd. That’s too much.

31 comments:

  1. ohh these look lovely though i never saw a butternut squash before in my life!

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  2. Jess kitchen,
    It's just a pumpkin with a long neck.
    :)

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  3. Hi

    Butternut Squash is actually pumpkin. It's just a name of the different types of squash. "Curcurbita" is the family of plants that pumpkin belongs to. This species includes squash, watermelon, cucumbers.

    So when a recipe calls for pumpkin... You can use butternut , banana squash, etc...

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  4. oh so lovely!
    sooo, butternut = pumpkins???

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  5. Wow! I would want to eat 2 of those two if they were in front of me now! So delicious looking!

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  6. When I was reading this, wondering what butternut squash is, now I only realized it's pumpkin. Looks delicious, I will keep this recipe :) Thanks!

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  7. I like it undressed and I want to eat it!!!!!!!
    The muffins looks absolutely delicious - they look so moist and rich!
    I like how you reduced the baking powder and sugar too...
    Thanks for sharing the recipe.

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  8. Wendy...great muffins...thanks for sharing the recipe. Great blog too ! and great photos good enough to make me salivate now :)

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  9. Anonymous,
    Thanks for the info.
    Oh, I never knew pumpkin goes by banana squash too. Here, the butternut goes by the same name as pumpkin, actually, and local butternut sells at the same price as pumpkins, and people will usually go by "long" or "round" pumpkins :)



    Ai Wei,
    Yes. The long type, not the round type.



    Jeannie,
    Haha.




    Min,
    The long necked pumpkin loooo.




    Jet,
    The original recipe for sugar is very very scary!!!




    Elin,
    thanks

    ReplyDelete
  10. This is an interesting recipe. Normally we will use cooked butternut squash for muffins but this one uses raw butternut squash. I too just bought a butternut squash and not sure what to do with it yet :)

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  11. Undress them! Wanna eat them now. Good use of butternut squash cos it is in abundance now :)

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  12. Wendy,can let me undress one? :P. The muffins look good, I like the color.

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  13. Gert,
    The blended squash will get cooked during the baking process and it smelt wonderful!!!
    I hope u will consider trying this recipe.



    Tigerfish,
    Yeah, autumn's here and lots and lots of them.



    Jess Bakericious,
    Sure can... seriously I love them, not only because of the colour.

    ReplyDelete
  14. I had no idea that baking powder was bad for you!! =S And I use it so much!! These look delicious =) I love muffins- I haven't made them for a while! I rarely eat pumpkin because no one in my family likes it =) But it sounds great in a muffin!

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  15. I was just looking for a muffin recipe! These sounds wonderful but I hate dealing with squash and pumpkin =(

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  16. Von,
    Just get alumimium free baking powder, and it'll be alright to use. It's hard to get that here.


    Pigpigscorner,
    Hard to peel right? I cut into cubes, then I cut off the skin from the cubes. It's easier this way.

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  17. 2 of these with a cup of coffee waiting for me tmrw morning wld be just perfect!

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  18. Healthy baking powder hard to get here? Then where's the nearest to get it? S'pore?

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  19. I love their crunchy little tops. The golden color is so pretty too.

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  20. I want to try this recipe too, but with the cheaper ingredient - pumpkin, hehe...

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  21. i have never baked with butternut squash. THis looks interesting. it is definitely going up in my to do list. thanks for sharing!

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  22. petite nyonya,
    Sames goes for me



    Meldylocks,
    Organic shops. They carry aluminium free baking powder.




    Lisa,
    The top is not very crunchy, it softens after a while out from the oven. But it still taste nice and moist.



    Little Inbox,
    Same one ler..... try to get the lock neck pumpkin, of which is the butternut. Market got long neck one, isn't it?



    Crustabakes,
    Hope u like it :)

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  23. I like your way of presentation for these muffin. The muffins look yummy and very artistic too LOL... Great job!

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  24. Zoe,
    Oh.. thanks for the compliments.
    Haha.

    ReplyDelete
  25. Hey Wendy, this is such a yummy looking recipe. I just saw some butternut squash in the market and I'm definitely picking some up on Sunday. This looks awesome. Glad to find someone else in Malaysia recipe blogging. :)

    ReplyDelete
  26. S,
    I hope you like the recipe

    BTW, There are quite a sum of Malaysian recipe bloggers, blogging from Malaysia or other countries. I have a whole list of them on my blogroll

    ReplyDelete
  27. This recipe looks so delicious. Did anyone happen to convert and record their measurements converted to cups and ounces? Or know of a good place to convert the measurements quickly? I have a butternut squash and I'm dying to make these this weekend.
    Thanks!

    ReplyDelete
  28. Dominique,
    Maybe you can try Jamie's original site.
    He has measurements for both volume and weight.
    I do not have any favourite sites for conversions, as I usually convert in my head.
    But for ingredients that I'm not familiar with (besides flour, sugar, fat and liquids), I'll measure with cups and then weigh that for future reference.

    ReplyDelete
  29. Thanks Wendy! Great site - beautiful photos and recipes.

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  30. Wendy,
    Your photos looked so yummylicious, that I had to try out this recipe. Thank you for sharing!

    I followed your instructions to the T, except that I used a handheld blender to blend the pumpkin with the eggs (the mixture become very frothy). When I mixed it with the beaten sugar & butter, it looked curdled. The muffins turned out quite heavy with a rubbery texture and does not have the usual soft light texture of muffins :(

    I am curious if this is suppose to be the right texture or is it because I may have beaten the flour mixture for too long. Would very much appreciate your feedback!

    Thanks
    MichelleG

    ReplyDelete
  31. MichelleG,
    Oh mine was fine and didn't curdle. Muffins are supposed to be mixed until just combined. Any overmixing will result in dense rubbery muffins.
    But then again, the addition of squash will make the texture soft and crumbly.

    ReplyDelete

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