Stitch and Bear

A long-running Irish blog with reviews of the best restaurants in Dublin and throughout Ireland. Some wine and cocktails thrown in for good measure!

Saturday, February 16, 2013

[Recipe] Butternut Squash Cake (Wheat-free)

I subscribe to many blogs, and I have found some treasures through word of mouth and recommendations. I usually bookmark the posts I find interesting and stockpile them until I have time to sit down and transfer the good content into my Evernote account. I recently added Juls' Kitchen to my list of subscriptions and started to read her posts about life and food in Tuscany. As I browsed, one particular recipe reached out and caught my attention almost immediately. 

The recipe was for a butternut squash cake and it's bright orange colour demanded that I make it myself. The concept of using carrots is well-established and I do have a trusty reliable recipe for delicious carrot cake. Butternut squash is one of my favourite vegetables, regardless of whether it's in a soup, oven roasted or mixed in a risotto. But I had never considered using a butternut squash in cake! Plus Juls had made her cake in a bundt tin, and I had just acquired such a tin. This seemed like the perfect occasion to christen it.

As I don't eat wheat, I modified Juls' recipe slightly by replacing the flour with Doves Farm Gluten-Free & Wheat-Free flour. This is an amazing flour substitute and produces great baking results. I even used it to make my Shrove Tuesday pancakes, and the results were excellent. But back to the cake! The end results are excellent; it is a moist, solid cake but not overly heavy. The sweetness of the sugar is nicely balanced by the vegetable tone of the squash and the tang of yogurt. It's a great alternative to carrot cake, and bound to garner some attention.

One final word, get over to Juls' lovely blog and start reading. You won't be disappointed. 

(taken from Juls' Kitchen)

Ingredients
350g butternut squash
125g plain yogurt
3 eggs
180g Demerara sugar
125g butter, melted
250g wheat-free flour
15g baking powder
1 teaspoon grated nutmeg
Icing sugar to decorate

Method
Preheat the oven to 180C, and generously butter, then lightly flour a bundt cake tin (24cm).

Use a food processor to grate (or alternatively grate by hand) the butternut squash, then puree with the yogurt. 

Beat together the eggs and sugar, until pale and increased in volume. Stir in the butternut squash puree, then fold in the sifted flour, baking powder and nutmeg. 

Pour the mixture into the cake tin, taking care to wipe away any bits stuck to the edges or outside of the tin. Bake in the preheated oven for about an hour, or until golden and a skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean. 

Let the cake cool down somewhat, then turn out from the tin and leave to cool completely on a wire rack. To serve, dust with icing sugar. 
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