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
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
Cannot wait to make these for Valentine's Day. Did you mean actual cooked brown rice in this recipe or brown rice flour? Thanks.
ReplyDeleteBrown rice flour. This is one of my favorite recipes!
ReplyDeleteThanks for checking it out :)