Butternut squash cake with whipped maple topping

Hello everybody!! The Fresh Pioneer is back and I have a sweet little something for your Fall! I don't know about you but I LOVE this weather. I love the apples, the leaves, the cool air, the fires in the evenings. Most of all, I love Fall food!

For once, an actual picture of the food I will be cooking and cyber serving. (See, I'm so smart I always post the first pic of something really pretty because that shows up on the link. Crazy like a fox, I am. If I posted a picture of the actual food no one would ever click.)
                                              

 So, first you need 4 cups of butternut squash, cooked and blended. (I'll pause while you get that done... *taps toes impatiently* Wait, you can buy them in little packages that go in the microwave?? Huh.)
 Preheat the oven to 325F. Rub tummy and say , "This is going to be delicious!" Positive thinking matters.

Blend one cup of sugar, 1/4 cup of butter, 3 eggs, 3 tbs lemon juice and the 4 c of cooked squash together with ONE CUP of flour. Edna went to town with this. Squash was flying everywhere! But she was happy so I let her go...

 (Mmmmm. Edna says that butternut squash is VERY GOOD FOR US! Lots of Vitamin A and C and fiber. Of course, I think she meant it's really good before we put all that butter and sugar in, but we'll just pretend it's still going to make us super healthy!)

Next add in a small bowl ONE MORE CUP of flour plus :

2 1/4 tsp baking powder
1 tsp ginger
3/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 allspice

Mix well and add into the main mixture. Pour into small ramekins (I love those things!) or a shallow baking dish.

Place the ramekins in one inch of water and bake for about 30 minutes. They seemed to take a long time to cook. Maybe I was hungry. Maybe it was all the small people clinging to my legs and pleading with their big, googly baby eyes for SQUASH CAKES.

So, finally they're done (the tops are cracked, which is what one recipe said, but even then they were coming out goopy when poked, so I gave them more time). 
So, the original recipe said the topping was sabayon flavored with Jack Daniels, which had been left alone for three weeks with two vanilla beans 'infusing the flavor'.
  Got all that???
So, I went to my local supermarket, paid $15 for two whole beans, bought some whiskey, plopped in the beans, and left it in the laundry room for three weeks...

 Fine, I did no such thing. Honestly, I think that part of the recipe was a test to see who was paying attention.

So, heavy cream whipped by a strong man, while the bowl is held by a small boy. (How's that for specific??)
Add 2TBS sugar, 1TSP vanilla and 2 TPS maple flavoring.  One dash of cinnamon for pretty.

 

Here's Edna all cleaned up and enjoying her serving of squash cake. She asked for just a few bites because she's watching the sugar. 

I think this was one of the best things to ever have emerged from my oven. The smell was amazing and the taste was perfectly light, not too gooey or heavy, and definitely not just pumpkin flavor. Even without the Jack Daniels-vanilla bean pod- sabayon, it was delicious.

 

 

 Until next week! I have some great apple recipes coming up and can't wait to share them! Feel free to pop by my facebook page at Pride, Prejudice, and Cheese Grits or my blog at The Things That Last!

 

Book Food: The Little House Connection

First in an occasional series on the food we love in the books we adore.

Jan has been posting on Facebook about the early October blizzard that hit South Dakota so hard last week. She was brave enough to read The Long Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder DURING the storm.

In balmy North Carolina, I was reading The Children's Blizzard, a non-fiction account of the storms Laura wrote about in her book. As gripping as can be. Interview with author David Laskin about researching The Children's Blizzard

Between Jan's posts about how the storm affected her state and The Children's Blizzard, well, I had to go back and read Long Winter too. So many things we don't get as kids, just read over them without the significance jumping out at us.  That's why we need to reread our childhood favorites.

How I loved the descriptions of food in the Little House books.  I remember the roasted pig's tale from Little House in the Big Woods and the wedding cake tasting dry in Laura's mouth in These Happy Golden Years.

But other folks have differing memories. Farmer Boy says FOOD to a lot of readers, all the way through the story.  Others remembered different things out of Little House in the Big Woods like headcheese and snow candy making.

Actually, lots of folks loved Farmer Boy the best. What's with that? I was bored with it. It was about a boy. I spent my summers on a farm and loved it. Didn't teach me anything new.

Give me the romance of These Happy Golden Years, even when it was a hard-won, practical version of romance.

We interrupt this blog post for a Little House Smackdown. What's your favorite book in the series? Did you love Farmer Boy? Dislike Happy Golden Years? I'll take you on! 

Deep breath. Back to LH food.  I'm glad I wasn't the only one who tried to make snow candy with Log Cabin syrup. And totally failed.   I found a recipe that works from The Little House Cookbook. The Little House Cookbook can be found here  

But it uses molasses and brown sugar. Hmmm, I wanted the maple candy from the Big Woods not the molasses candy from the prairie days.  I searched the Internets and found something totally incredible. A recipe that uses maple syrup and butter but, more amazingly, VANILLA ICE CREAM for the snow. Thank you, grouprecipes.com Here's the recipe for maple candy on vanilla ice cream snow.

So what IS your favorite Little House book? Have you lived through a blizzard? Made snow candy? Or wanted to know the real story behind Laura Ingalls Wilder as a writer?

PS.

You can read my So You Think You Can Write Entry A Heart to Protect Love Inspired Historical entry 

Find me on Facebook Here at Julie Hilton Steele - Writer

Or have some fun on Pinterest with me Julie Steele (Juliehs) on Pinterest

Butternut squash cake with maple whipped topping

Hello everybody!! The Fresh Pioneer is back and I have a sweet little something for your Thanksgiving week.

For once, an actual picture of the food I will be cooking and cyber serving. (See, I'm so smart I always post the first pic of something really pretty because that shows up on the link. Crazy like a fox, I am. If I posted a picture of the actual food no one would ever click.)

 So, first you need 4 cups of butternut squash, cooked and blended. (I'll pause while you get that done... *taps toes impatiently* Wait, you can buy them in little packages that go in the mircowave?? Huh.)

 Preheat the oven to 325F. Rub tummy and say , "This is going to be delicious!" Positive thinking matters.

Blend one cup of sugar, 1/4 cup of butter, 3 eggs, 3 tbs lemon juice and the 4 c of cooked squash together with ONE CUP of flour. Edna went to town with this. Squash was flying everywhere! But she was happy so I let her go...

 

 (Mmmmm. Edna says that butternut squash is VERY GOOD FOR US! Lots of Vitamin A and C and fiber. Of course, I think she meant it's really good before we put all that butter and sugar in, but we'll just pretend it's still going to make us super healthy!)

Next add in a small bowl ONE MORE CUP of flour plus :

2 1/4 tsp baking powder
1 tsp ginger
3/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 allspice

Mix well and add into the main mixture. Pour into small ramekins (I love those things!) or a shallow baking dish.

 

Place the ramekins in one inch of water and bake for about 30 minutes. They seemed to take a long time to cook. Maybe I was hungry. Maybe it was all the small people clinging to my legs and pleading with their big, googly baby eyes for SQUASH CAKES.

So, finally they're done (the tops are cracked, which is what one recipe said, but even then they were coming out goopy when poked, so I gave them more time).

 

So, the original recipe said the topping was sabayon flavored with Jack Daniels, which had been left alone for three weeks with two vanilla beans 'infusing the flavor'.


Got all that???
So, I went to my local supermarket, paid $15 for two whole beans, bought some whiskey, plopped in the beans, and left it in the laundry room for three weeks...

 

 

(Stephen Colbert giving me the skeptical face.)

 

 Fine, I did no such thing. Honestly, I think that part of the recipe was a test to see who was paying attention.

So, heavy cream whipped by a strong man, while the bowl is held by a small boy. (How's that for specific??)

Add 2TBS sugar, 1TSP vanilla and 2 TPS maple flavoring.  One dash of cinnamon for pretty.

 

Here's Edna all cleaned up and enjoying her serving of squash cake. She asked for just a few bites because she's watching the sugar.

 

I think this was one of the best things to ever have emerged from my oven. The smell was amazing and the taste was perfectly light, not too gooey or heavy, and definitely not just pumpkin flavor. Even without the Jack Daniels-vanilla bean pod- sabayon, it was delicious.

 

 

 

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving!