I have bunches of squash these days and I’ve had a hankering since the other day to make these squash muffins. I ended up making a few changes, starting with switching it to a Quick Mix recipe, among other things. You can use any winter squash in this recipe. I used butternut here.
To prepare the puree, cut open and bake squash pieces at 350-degrees, face-down, on a lightly greased baking sheet for about an hour and a half. Scoop out pulp and mash.
Butternut is truly my favorite of all the winter squash. You can get three to four cups of puree out of an average butternut squash and it has a relatively small seed pocket. There’s a lot of squash flesh for its size. I haven’t grown any before (this one came free from the farmers market), but I want to grow my own next year.
If you want to save seeds for future planting, rinse seeds in a bowl of cool water.
Sort out the seeds. I use my fingers to take them out of the rinse water, pulling off any clinging pulp. I pat the seeds dry on a paper towel then spread them out to dry on waxed paper. Let dry thoroughly. You can store the seeds in an envelope in a cool, dark spot till next year. And have all the butternut squash you want. (And don’t you want a lot? I do!)
I saved some cushaw squash seeds the other day, too. I saved way too many seeds, but I’ll share with Georgia.
Here’s how I made my muffins using my homemade baking mix. Try them this way (they’re wonderful!) or see the original recipe here. You can transfer many baking recipes to a Quick Mix recipe. My homemade baking mix includes flour, baking powder, salt, sugar, and cream of tartar. Just replace the flour, baking powder etc called for in a recipe cup per cup with Quick Mix. If it’s a sweet recipe, like this one, reduce the added sugar slightly because there is some sugar in the baking mix. This recipe called for 1 cup of sugar. I reduced it to 3/4 cup and switched the white sugar to brown sugar. I love brown sugar with winter squash. I (accidentally, providentially) changed the measurements on the spices, added an extra egg, and added raisins and pecans soaked in rum.
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How to make Winter Squash Muffins:
1 cup winter squash, cooked and mashed
3 eggs
1/3 cup oil
1/4 cup light corn syrup
2 cups homemade baking mix
3/4 cup brown sugar, packed
1/2 tablespoon cinnamon
1/2 tablespoon ginger
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon mace
1/2 cup raisins
1/2 cup finely chopped/crushed pecans
1/4 cup rum
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
Preheat oven to 350F. Grease muffin pan or use papers. Place raisins and pecans in a small saucepan with rum and vanilla. Bring to a boil then turn off heat, cover, and let sit while preparing the muffin batter. (If you prefer, you can soak the raisins in plain water or some other concoction of your choice, and you don’t have to soak the nuts at all. Do what you want.)
Mix squash, eggs, oil and corn syrup in a large bowl.
Wait, that’s only two eggs! (I’ll explain in a minute.)
Add two cups baking mix and cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and mace. I accidentally added 1/2 tablespoon each of cinnamon and ginger. The original recipe called for 1/2 teaspoon. I have this beautiful new set of red measuring spoons and it includes a 1/2 tablespoon measure. I’ve never had a set of measuring spoons before that had a 1/2 tablespoon. I just picked out the “1/2” and went with it then realized what I’d done.
I decided I liked it that way. There are no mistakes in cooking, only experiments. (By the way, a tablespoon is equal to three teaspoons, so if you don’t have a 1/2 tablespoon measure in your spoons, use 1 1/2 teaspoons.)
Look at all those beautiful spices!
Then I decided the muffin batter wasn’t quite right. It was too thick.
Way too thick, even for muffin batter. What should I do? I could add milk. Or rum! (Ha.) Based on my instinct for what was already in the mixture, I didn’t want to weaken the batter in the process of adding moisture; I wanted to add moisture and substance at the same time. So I added another egg.
I decided I liked it that way.
Meanwhile, the raisins and pecans had soaked up every bit of the rum and vanilla so no flavor lost there!
In go the raisins and pecans.
Spoon batter into muffin cups. I filled the cups almost to the top.
Bake at 350-degrees for 25-30 minutes, till lightly browned on top. Turn out onto a wire rack. Melt a little bit of butter and drizzle on top of the baked muffins. Sprinkle with turbinado sugar.
Breakfast.
These are such moist muffins, you can eat them without adding anything. Or add some butter if you want. Better yet, cut one open and pour some maple syrup on top. You’ll think you died and went to heaven.
These are my new favorite muffins. At least until the next muffins. I love muffins!
*Makes 16 regular-sized muffins.
See this recipe at Farm Bell Recipes and save it to your recipe box.
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C says:
Mmmmm. I’m doing these and I may just plant butternut squash next year! I am not a squash eater except for butternut and acorn squash. These look great.
On October 5, 2009 at 3:37 am
Sheila Z says:
I wouldn’t bother saving seed from squash or pumpkins. They cross pollinate so readily that you will likely end up with a plant that produces inedible fruits. The flesh will be gourd like in flavor and texture. To save seed from this family is tricky, you need to hand pollinate and cover the flowers and make sure they don’t get crossed by insect pollination with other members of the squash/melon/gourd/cucumber family (concurbite). Some garden plants are self pollinated so it’s easy to save seed and get plants that reproduce true to the variety. Tomato and bean seed are good ones to save.
I do know what pumpkin and squash seed are good for besides roasting and eating though. Give them to your chickens. They are natures worm medicine and the chickens love them.
On October 5, 2009 at 3:50 am
Alison says:
For the most part, Sheila Z is right about squashes cross-pollinating. But I just recently read (here: https://fastgrowtheweeds.com/2009/10/02/on-long-stored-squash/ )
that butternuts (cucurbita moschata) don’t easily cross with the four other types of typical garden squash, as most of its relatives are rare. FYI 🙂
On October 5, 2009 at 10:26 am
Sheila Z says:
Alison, I’m so happy to learn you can save seeds that are true to type from butternut squash. It’s good to learn something new. I’ve never successfully saved squash seed and had anything grow that was edible, but I’m going to try saving seed from butternut and see what happens. Cheap garden experiments are always fun. Thank you for the info and link.
On October 6, 2009 at 3:21 am
Sheila Z says:
Oh, and butternut are one of the easiest and most prolific winter squash to grow. They also store the best of any I’ve ever grown. Blue Hubbard store well too, but don’t grow or yield as well as the butternuts do. To me butternut is just about the perfect winter squash.
On October 5, 2009 at 3:53 am
Runningtrails says:
Wow! You made some fabulous changes to my original recipe! I love the nuts and raisins soaked in rum idea!
I grow lots of different kinds of squash, hubbard and buttercup being my favorite. I grew butternut too, but it seems to take longer to set fruit. Up here that makes a big difference. I don’t know if I will grow it again, as there are so many other kinds of squash.
I gew Nutty Delica, a Japanese Ebisu, this year for the first time. Haven’t tried it yet. It is suppose to be very sweet and nutty tasting!
Next year I will add “Turk’s Cap” also called “Turban” to my garden. They are so beautiful I can use them for fall decorations before eating them.
I am also going to add Hopi pale gray and Hopi black squash, just because of their history.
I hand pollinated all my squash flowers this year. It was fun. I may just separate the various squah types by distance next year, or try a screen box to keep out the bees and just hand pollinate, like this one: (I loved this idea!)
https://www.hawthornfarm.ca/images/spreading_mulch.jpg.
I could discuss squash all day! LOL!
The muffins look great!
On October 5, 2009 at 4:30 am
CindyP says:
Those do look delicious!! Gots to find me some squash…. actually it won’t be that hard, this area is FULL of squash fields! I tried growing some this year, but I probably should have been out there hand pollinating, they never took, just beautiful blossoms! Ah…learning.
On October 5, 2009 at 5:03 am
jane says:
Cornhusk – saw in one of my old Christmas with Southern Living they took the husk and wrapped them around the lid of the canning jar with string, rope, ribbon etc and attached a gift card or small ornament for giving as a gift. Good idea for the husk.
On October 5, 2009 at 6:08 am
Lynda Dunham-Watkins says:
Ummm…have to try these. I raise Butternut and love them, so many great ways to cook them, and they are such fun to grow.
On October 5, 2009 at 6:15 am
Kris7 says:
I think I’ll try this recipe with pumpkin puree. This weekend, we made a pie from a real pumpkin and it worked out! But there’s lots extra puree left over. This recipe looks yummy.
We saved the pumpkin seeds for planting next year. If that doesn’t work out, I won’t beat myself up about it…since Sheila Z says it’s a bit difficult.
Kris7
Working hard at http://www.sccworlds.com
On October 5, 2009 at 6:22 am
.Nancy in Iowa says:
Yummmm – Suzanne, won’t you come bake for me? You don’t have to travel to that big city Atlanta now, just come on out to Iowa!!
Thanks.
On October 5, 2009 at 9:18 am
Susie says:
I see others have beat me to it, but I was just going to say if you plant more than one type of squash you WILL get strange things growing… We managed to over come most of this problem with distance. For us it was zucchini at one end of the garden and pumpkins way over there on the other side of the yard. We did have the odd strange zucchini but that may have happened anyway otherwise all was good!
On October 5, 2009 at 9:30 am
Suzanne says:
For us, these came from the farmers market, so I’m hoping that means that they came from large fields of like squash since they were grown for selling. We’ll see!
On October 5, 2009 at 9:33 am
Leslie says:
Great recipe! There are never too many ways to use squash! I also like the grilled corn recipe…will be trying that one soon! :sheep:
On October 5, 2009 at 9:48 am
Alison says:
Love the “Printable Recipe” link!! That’s so fantastic.
However, I’ve been finding it a bit annoying lately when I’m perusing your comments, and I try to right-click on a link so as to open it in a new tab, and not lose my place in the list of comments. This is because I get a pop-up window that tells me “photos on this site are copyrighted” Which is fine, I understand that, but I’m not clicking on a picture, I’m clicking on a link!!
So I have to click the link, copy the URL, open a new tab, paste the URL, hit enter, go back to the old tab, and hit the back button on the browser. Obviously, it’s not too annoying, as I’m still here, reading, but just saying…
On October 5, 2009 at 10:36 am
Suzanne says:
Alison, I’m sorry about that. If someone can tell me a better way to stop photo theft, I’d do it. I had to have a right-click block script installed because of what was becoming a massive and growing problem with photo lifting off my site. Unfortunately, it does block ALL right clicking.
On October 5, 2009 at 10:43 am
Alison says:
Oh, I totally get that 🙂 And I will persist despite my annoyance, because I love your blog.
I’m thinking I’m going to have to see if my browser can be set up to open everything I click on in a new tab – if I can figure it out. Some sites do that automatically, do you have a techie person who knows about that, or are you your own “techie”?
On October 5, 2009 at 11:08 am
Suzanne says:
I have a website designer who does technical work for me. I’ll ask her about it!
On October 5, 2009 at 11:23 am
Amber says:
Oh those look so good! :eating:
On October 5, 2009 at 10:39 am
Candy Stivers says:
This weekend I made the Blueberry bread. I didn’t have fresh berries, just frozen. I placed 1 c berries in a strainer overnight and then proceeded with the recipe. It worked wonderfully. Just thought others would like an option to fresh berries. Now I’m thinking about trying cherries!
On October 5, 2009 at 12:24 pm
Melinda in Washington State says:
Suzanne I love squash. Thanks for the recipe. Alison, try this. Open your favorites and right click on “Chickens in the Road” and this will give you a drop window where you can select to open a new tab. Once another tab is open this might help when following Suzanne’s comments. Play around with it and see if it helps.
On October 5, 2009 at 3:15 pm
Runningtrails says:
Do you think cranberries would be good in the squash muffins? I love cranberries! I might try them with dried cranberries next time.
On October 6, 2009 at 5:47 am
Suzanne says:
That sounds wonderful! I think any dry fruit could be substituted for the raisins.
On October 6, 2009 at 6:14 am
Rituparna says:
Yumm …..
I just ahve to make these.
On October 6, 2009 at 10:20 am
Beth says:
Oh, my, HELL. I’m not fat enough, right? this one drew me in and stitched me up in a matter of moments. Not like “typical” pumpkin bread, this recipe uses spices to a beautiful advantage, and I may have eaten an entire muffin-full of batter just by finger-testing the raw stuff in the bowl.
Love, love, LOVE this recipe!!
On October 11, 2009 at 1:37 am