Thursday, September 17, 2009

Butternut Squash Cake -- a Jamie Oliver Recipe and Jamie's Popovers


I had a gorgeous organic butternut squash sitting in the fridge and in trying to figure out what to make with it I stumbled across Jamie Oliver's butternut squash cupcakes. I always have good results with Jamie's recipes and I was really intrigued by using squash in a cake, so I decided to give it a try. (I made a cake since I was out of cupcake papers.)


I LOVE this cake. It is one of the tastiest cakes I've ever made. Plus, it's so simple. It's moist, keeps well, and freezes beautifully.


The cake is easy to make--you don't even need to pre-cook the squash. It's basically just like making a carrot cake, but using squash instead of carrots. I also made a simple cream cheese frosting instead of Jamie's sour cream icing. I mixed powdered sugar, soft cream cheese, a little milk, vanilla, and some lemon zest to make the frosting.

I know "squash" cake sounds a bit odd, but if you like carrot cake I think you'll love this. Here's the link to the recipe:
http://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/pastry-cake/butternut-squash-muffins


Here's another wonderful Jamie recipe. Popovers (Yorkshire Puddings). I've never had much luck with popovers until this recipe. They come out so light and airy and puff up beautifully. Here's a link to the recipe. If you've had previous popover failures, try this.
http://www.jamieoliver.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=23575


12 comments:

  1. That squash cake looks fabulous! I'll have to give it a try :)

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  2. Squash cake doesn't sound too far out - I mean, we eat zucchini and carrot cake, right? I'm intrigued with this one and as soon as Costco starts selling the bags of pre-cut squash, I'll give it a try.

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  3. wow I totally would not try this but it makes sense it would taste like carrot cake and be good :) thanks for the review!

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  4. The squash cake sounds good, and I like your idea of cream cheese frosting with it. The popovers look great! I didn't realize that Yorkshire Pudding and Popovers were the same thing. I thought Yorkshire Pudding was something with meat!

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  5. I've never had squash cake, but I imagine it is really delicious. Definitely putting it on the list! Looks wonderful!

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  6. I think this sounds great. yum.

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  7. I made this cake following your suggestion and it was great. Really simple and delicious. To cook as one cake it did take a long time - about an hour and twenty mins in my fan oven so leave time for the baking! The quantities in the original recipe made a big cake though so I made plenty of cream cheese icing and cut in the middle to make it extra special. Thanks for the tip.

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  8. I made this cake following your suggestion and it was really well received. It's simple and delicious. Did take a long time to bake as one whole - about an hour and twenty mins in my fan oven. But it came out quite big so I cut down the middle and put an extra layer of cream cheese icing in to make it extra special. Thanks for the tip!

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  9. I'm so glad that you enjoyed it!

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  10. Hi, you say it freezes well? Can you tell me how you did that? In bags/tupperware? Presumably just the cake and not the frosting? and did you just leave it out to defrost? Sorry - I don't normally freeze things and hence the perhaps silly sounding questions!

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    1. I usually just wrap things in Saran Wrap or use Ziplock bags. You can freeze it first until the frosting is hard and then wrap it up tightly.

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