Butternut Squash Cake with Ginger Cream Cheese Frosting

14 Nov

Isn’t it fantastic how some foods just seem to match a certain season?  Though I would be loathe to turn down a slice of spice cake when it was hot and sunny outside, somehow that very same spice cake ends up feeling so much more right if offered up on a chilly fall afternoon.  Perhaps it is because we have been trained since birth to accept the familiarity of certain foods and flavors during specific seasons and holidays, developing the unwavering sense that gingerbread eaten during the summer is somehow less fitting than gingerbread eaten during the cold and wet months of fall and winter.

I have a different theory, though.  I think our predilection for eating certain types of foods during certain types of the year is based not on seasonal availability or a lifelong development of preference, but rather on something more obvious: color.

Just as the crimson fire of a ripe strawberry signals summer, the mellow orange of a squash speaks of autumn leaves turning and the sun setting low in the sky.  It’s ingrained within us, I think.  When the weather turns cold and the colors around us transform into amber and rust, we reach for ripened apples, golden pears, and the saffron-colored flesh of autumn squash.  Dark clouds call for deeply chocolaty cakes and spicy gingerbread.  The coolness of snow makes us crave a dollop of whipped cream on top of a cup of rich, warm cocoa.  Is it possible that nature is telling us what to eat?  Would nature ever really tell us to eat whipped cream?  I should hope so.

In keeping with my theory of seasonal color eating, I was struck last week by the desire to make a very autumnal cake.  Though most people would think to make a cake of pumpkin when looking for a perfect fall dessert, it just so happened that I had a bit of leftover butternut squash sitting in my refrigerator, courtesy of this dalliance with butternut squash for Portland Farmers Market.  Butternut squash and pumpkin are remarkably similar, and I had a hunch that, spiced up and sweetened, they would behave in a very similar manner.

As it turned out, I think butternut squash turns out even better in a cake than pumpkin, more well-rounded somehow, and with a fuller texture.  Lightly spread with this unbelievably creamy, gently gingery frosting, it’s a fitting dessert for any fall day, as evidenced (in keeping with my theory) not only by its color, but also (somewhat unrelated to my theory, but equally as important), by the fact that it lasted approximately two days in our house before we managed to eat the whole thing.  (We shared a little.  Emphasis on little.)

Butternut Squash Cake with Ginger Cream Cheese Frosting

Butternut Squash Cake

1 ½ cups cake flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

¼ teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

1 ½ teaspoons ground cinnamon

1 teaspoon ground powdered ginger

½ teaspoon ground nutmeg

1/3 cup buttermilk or soured milk

½ teaspoon pure vanilla extract

6 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature

2/3 cup white sugar

1/3 cup dark brown sugar

2 large eggs, at room temperature

1 cup butternut squash puree (here I have outlined a shortcut to cooking butternut squash in the microwave)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.  Grease and flour the bottoms and sides of a 9-inch round cake pan.  Line the bottom of the pan with a round of parchment paper.

In a medium bowl, combine the cake flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, ginger, and nutmeg.  Whisk to combine, then set aside.

In a small bowl or measuring cup, combine buttermilk or soured milk with the vanilla.  Mix to combine, and set aside.

In a large bowl, or in the bowl of a stand mixer, beat the butter until creamy, about 30-60 seconds.  Gradually add in both the white sugar and dark brown sugar, beating at high speed until the mixture is light and fluffy, about 3-4 minutes.  One at a time, beat in the eggs, mixing well after each addition.  Reduce the mixer speed to low, and add in the butternut squash puree.

Scrape down the sides and bottom of the bowl.  With the mixer on low speed, add in 1/3 of the flour mixture to the butter mixture, mixing until just combined.  Add in ½ of the milk mixture, and mix until just combined.  Continue adding the flour, then milk, in this manner, mixing after each addition until just combined.

Gently stir the batter one last time by hand, making sure to stir in the contents at the very bottom of the bowl.  Pour the batter into the prepared cake pan.  Bake in the center of the oven for 30-35 minutes, until a cake tester inserted into the middle of the cake comes out clean, with just a few moist crumbs attached.

Cool the cake in its pan for 5 minutes, then invert onto a cooling rack to continue cooling completely.

Ginger Cream Cheese Frosting

3 ounces cream cheese (about 4 tablespoons), at room temperature

6 tablespoons powdered sugar

2 teaspoons freshly squeezed lemon juice

3 tablespoons milk or heavy cream

¼ teaspoon grated fresh ginger

pinch of salt

In a small bowl, whisk together the cream cheese, powdered sugar, lemon juice, and milk or heavy cream.  Whisk continually, until the mixture is smooth and creamy, about 2 minutes.  Add in the fresh ginger and pinch of salt, then continue whisking until incorporated, about 30 seconds.

When cake has cooled completely, spread frosting over the top of the cake, coaxing the frosting ever-so-slightly down the sides of the cake.

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Recipe Roundup

10 Nov

When compiling and sorting these articles and recipes, it took me a moment to realize that, though I will be sharing five links below, those links actually contain a total of nine separate recipes.  I’m crediting Portland Farmers Market for that unexpected burst of recipes, as the very nature of my writing relationship with them dictates that I will attempt to make as much food as possible with the smallest amount of funds required (note: all six of my recipes for them came in at well under $20–that’s for all six recipes combined.  You want frugal?  I can give you frugal.)

As an added bonus, these dishes would all fit in nicely atop your Thanksgiving table, especially if you are looking for recipe ideas that fall well outside the basic realm of turkey and potatoes.

Pear-Stuffed Acorn Squash; Kidney Bean and Sweet Potato Soup

Butternut Squash Gnocchi with Three Sauces (Sage Brown Butter, Caramelized Shallots and Thyme, and Garlic Chips with Sauteed Spinach)

This sage brown butter sauce was so good that I ate it until I felt a profound sense of discomfort.

Indie Fixx continues to provide Savory Salty Sweet with a great place to share more recipes with more people. These three recipes are my most recent contributions, and they happen to be some of my favorites.  That dark chocolate zucchini cake is absolutely magical.  It’s rich, complex-tasting without being complicated to make, and it just so happens to be vegan (and secretly stuffed with a vegetable, which you’d never, ever be able to tell by eating it).

Linguine with Slow Roasted Tomatoes and Garlic

Dark Chocolate Zucchini Cake

Blueberry, Orange, and Cornmeal Pancakes

On an unrelated note, a couple of months ago I made zucchini muffins with some fantastically fresh zucchini, straight from our garden.  As I was scooping the batter into the muffins tins, I noticed that things were looking a little firmer and more robust than they normally should.  Undaunted, I moved on, baking the muffins anyway.  It was only after the muffins had been removed from their tins and cooled that I realized why the muffins looked rather unusual.  I forgot to add the sugar.

Surprisingly, I actually sort of liked the muffins without sugar.  They were still very moist, but they were definitely sturdier, without the fine crumb usually found in a muffin.  They actually tasted more like a bread, less like a muffin, and closer to what I prefer these days when I gravitate towards a snack.  I am debating whether or not to share the recipe.  I am not sure if these muffins would be anyone else’s cup of tea, since I happened to be the only person in the house who ended up eating them (and I live with a carb-loving child and the Perfect Eating Machine, so that’s saying something).

Still, I am sort of fond of them in all their sugar-free, cinnamon-filled glory.

Jeez, that looks healthful.  Like some sort of nutrition nugget that zoologists develop as a snack for panda bears.

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Sweet and Spicy Popcorn

8 Nov

A couple of summers ago, we happened upon a summer festival in the small coastal town where we were vacationing.  Though we were delighted by the showcase of old (and still functioning) steam engine trains, the thing that piqued my interest the most was the huge man with the even huger beard making old-fashioned kettle corn over a roaring pile of burning logs.

The kettle being stirred by the man was enormous, I swear you could have fit both me and my son inside of it and still had room for some popcorn.  When the fellow first dropped some handfuls of popcorn and sugar into the kettle, he kept the lid on top, flipping his stir stick around inside as best he could while still making certain to hold the lid close enough to the top of the kettle so the sizzling hot kernels of popcorn wouldn’t jump out and singe him.  As the pile of popped corn began to grow, the man dispensed with the lid all together, stirring the contents of the kettle as they grew taller and fluffier, the popped kernels on top keeping the actively popping kernels on the bottom from leaping out of the kettle.

Call me naïve, but this process had me enraptured.  Not because it seemed intoxicatingly complex, mind you (though that raging fire burning beneath the popcorn kettle presented many a challenge, I am sure), but rather because the opposite was very quickly becoming clear to me.  I could totally make that at home, I thought, and as soon as we get home, I am so going to do it.

Cut to over a year later, and we get to the part of the story where I realize that, though I have certainly contemplated the making of kettle corn ever since I saw it being made right before my eyes, I never actually got around to tackling the experiment.  Interestingly enough, in the intervening months of thinking about kettle corn, I had actually started to wonder if I could dress up the snack a bit, give it a bit more kick to offset the basic components of popcorn, oil, and sugar.  Kettle corn was all right, but somehow all those months of thinking about making it had made me realize that what I really wanted to make was something still related to kettle corn, but stepped up a tad.

So, please allow me to introduce you to my new friend, kettle corn’s cousin, sweet and spicy popcorn.  A tiny bit of cinnamon and nutmeg add a warm and savory touch to the taste of the lightly sweet and buttery popcorn, while the chipotle powder creeps in with a small punch of heat to keep every bite interesting.  The flavor profile of this popcorn is simply a delight.  There is a little bit of everything going at once, but not so much that it overwhelms your palette and exhausts your taste buds.  Sometimes, because I am nothing if not super classy (what now?), I’ll pair this popcorn with a nice, crisp glass of white wine.  And sometimes, because I am also a small child passing as an adult, I will eat this very combination of foods for dinner.  Oops.  I think I just killed the classy part.

Sweet and Spicy Popcorn

If you are making this treat for children or people who do not enjoy spicy food, feel free to omit the chipotle powder from the cooking process.  You can, as I do when eating this with my son, keep some chipotle powder handy and sprinkle it on your own individual portion, leaving the master batch unspicy.

¼ teaspoon cinnamon

1/8 to 1/4 teaspoon chipotle powder or hot chili powder, adjusted according to your preference for spicy foods

pinch nutmeg

2 tablespoons sugar

1 tablespoon vegetable oil

1 tablespoon butter

½ cup popcorn kernels

½ teaspoon sea salt

Combine cinnamon, chipotle powder, nutmeg, and sugar in a small bowl and set aside.  In a large pot, heat butter and oil over medium low heat until the butter has melted.  Add popcorn and sugar/spice mixture to the hot oil and butter, stir to combine, then place a lid on top of the pot.

Wearing oven mitts so as not to run the risk of burning yourself, gently shake and swirl the pot on top of the stove to keep the kernels moving around in the hot oil and butter.  When the kernels begin to pop, continue to gently shake the pot until you can hear the popping subside.  Immediately empty the popped corn into a large bowl, then sprinkle with salt.

Makes one very large bowl of popcorn.

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