Day 7: Kabocha Squash Cupcakes

What a wonderful day. Not only was it unseasonable warm and beautiful outside today, but I was able to spend some time at one of the stores that carries our product line. It’s nice to meet directly with customers to show what we had to offer. In the process we made a few new supporters and networking contacts. We were even lucky enough to meet Beth Hillson, author of a delicious cookbook and food editor for Living Without magazine. I can assure you that I will be trying out many of her recipes- her carrot cake was delicious and she had a great take on quinoa salad!

I came home to my very hungry boys and decided to make them something special for a dessert tonight.

Tonight was a double “new” recipe night, so it was a tough decision which one I would be blogging about. We had homemade onion soup for dinner (using the bread made from last night’s recipe), which was tasty, but all of us finished tonight off with a new cupcake recipe that took our breath away! Therefore, I’m starting with the best part of the night. The onion soup will be tomorrow’s blog J

Kabocha, pronounced as it looks- “Ca- Bo- CHA”, is one of the winter squash varieties. (According to the internet… it is also known as a Ebisu, Delica, Hoka, Hokkaido, or Japanese Pumpkin). I had never cooked with it before, but in my quest to eat more naturally I also wanted to try to use more veggies and fruits that are “in season”. Originally I was intending this little sweet winter squash for a side dish, but then I found a recipe online (via William's Sonoma) for kabocha cupcakes. I adapted the recipe- meaning I made it gluten free, reduced the sugar, added some other spices and adapted the liquid ingredients to meet the needs of the GF flours. So here it is...

Kabocha Squash Cupcakes

GF, NF, Cof, and SF  (Contains EGGS and DAIRY)

Makes 12 Cupcakes

Ingredients:

1 Kabocha Squash (you will need 1 cup of puree for recipe)

This is a Kabocha Pumpkin/Squash
Image admittedly stolen from the internet,
from a source I can not longer find :)

½ Cup Water (for baking squash)

¼ Cup Potato Starch

¾ Cup Tapioca Starch/Flour

½ Cup Brown Rice

2 TBS Canola Oil

¾ Cups White Sugar

2 Eggs

½ tsp Vanilla

1 tsp Baking Soda

½ tsp Cinnamon

¼ tsp Cloves
1/4 tsp ginger

¼ tsp Salt

¼ Cup Milk

To Make the Kabocha Squash Puree:

Cut one Kabocha squash in half (top to bottom), DO NOT remove seeds. Place face down into bake ware (I used my corning ware) and pour in ½ cup of water. Bake uncovered at 400 degrees for approximately 1 hour, or until squash becomes soft. 

Allow baked squash to cool (I put it into a Ziploc and put in the fridge overnight)

Scoop out the seeds, careful not to remove any of the soft flesh.

Scoop out the flesh of the squash to puree. The skin IS edible, but not good for this particular recipe.

Puree the squash in a food processor. You could probably do this by hand because the squash is VERY velvety and tender.

You will only need 1 cup of the puree, so set that aside. You do not need to use the remainder of the squash puree right away, and I’ve heard that it freezes well. But trust me, this recipe is SO good, I would just double the recipe in the future until all the squash was used up.

Making the Cupcakes:

Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees

Filling the cups.

Combine the squash and ALL of the dry ingredients in a bowl.

Add in the eggs.

Wisk in the vanilla, milk and oil.

Combine until smooth.

Fill each cupcake paper about ½-3/4 full. Keep in mind that this made exactly 12 regular size cupcakes for me.

All baked up and ready for frosting

Bake for 18-20 minutes or until firm and golden. Mine took just about 20 minutes on the middle rack, but I could see where if it was placed any lower you would be toward the 18 minute side of that scale.

Once they cooked I topped them with some homemade cream cheese frosting. I don’t really measure when I make frosting. I just used ½ of a bar of cream cheese, a little fine sugar, and a splash of vanilla. I know, not very accurate measurements, but it came out perfect for these cupcakes!

They come out very moist and I’m pretty sure no one would know they were gluten free! DELICIOUS!!!

I will definitely be using kabocha squash for other recipes in the future; it was a very exciting find. Let me know your thoughts! Enjoy!

Naturally,

Raych