Browsing the archives for the butternut squash tag.

Happy New Years Eve (and a Deceptively Delicious round up)

California, Healthy

Happy New Years Eve!! Tonight we’ll celebrate with the littles early and call our parents and then we’ll celebrate at midnight and call a bunch of friends on the East coast at 3am. Hehe. That means YOU, Talea! I am looking forward to tonight, but I’ll wait and show you all the silly fun tomorrow!!

In 2011 I set out to cook and bake my way through Deceptively Delicious. I made a decent dent in it, more than half of the recipes, and I kept making recipes from it this year. There are just a few I haven’t gotten to yet. It’s a fun book full of sneaky ways to add vegetable purees into everyday recipes, focused on getting your kids to eat them but it works just as well with husband and yourself! I’m not big on a lot of the healthiest veggies so I love to add them in to recipes! I know they’re there and I’m getting the benefits of them without sitting down to a plate of spinach, you know?

Here are four of the recipes I made a while ago, but just posted. All of them were simple and tasted great!

Deceptively Delicious - Quesadillas Deceptively Delicious - Quesadillas

There have been a lot of serious winners from his book in our house and a few not so well received dishes. This one though has become our oldest little one’s favorite snack. He asks fot it several times a week. Just before we moved to LA, I made this for him and a three of his friends and they inhaled it. For the record, none of those kids would ever eat squash or navy beans or even sour cream! (read)

Deceptively Delicious - Pink Pancakes Deceptively Delicious - Pink Pancakesread)
Deceptively Delicious - Pasta with Bolognese Sauce Deceptively Delicious - Pasta with Bolognese Sauce

I am the only person in the house that isn’t a big fan of spaghetti and pasta sauce. I actually kinda hate it. If I make it for the fam and I don’t feel like coking something else, I’ll eat it. Another exception is if we are visiting someone and they make it. Otherwise, noooo thank you. This sauce though? Not bad at all. I honestly didn’t mind it at all and I think it was the addition of the sweet potato puree that made it better. (read)

Deceptively Delicious - Oatmeal Raisin Cookies
Deceptively Delicious - Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

I was a little nervous to present these to the kids because they’re not big on raisins OR nuts in their cookies so these didn’t go ove too well with them, but a few of my girlfriends were over when I made these and they loved them! No one had any idea there was zucchini in them until I told them. You could add wheat bran or ground flax to these to really up the fiber without changing the taste! Or swap the raisins for dried cranberries! (read)

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Getting Settled & Catching Up

Crafty, Domestic, Healthy, Pretty

Greetings long lost souls. It’s been two weeks since my last post which, while better than the seven weeks between that and the post before it, is not cool and should be my last disappearance for a while. Things are falling into place around here – all the boxes are unpacked, all the clutter has been tossed or donated and I can finally look around the new house and sigh happily instead of having no idea where my extra food processor blades are (the horror).

Actually, there is one casualty of this move – the nubby thing on the top of my pressure cooker. Insert loud, inconsolable sobbing here. I was positive that I packed it in the pressure cooker. Of course when I took the lid off once it was out of the box, it was not only not inside the pot but not inside the box. Now that everything has been unpacked, I have to give up and order a new one. My dad gave me his (hilariously unused – hilariously because he’s owned it for 30 years and it still had the original recipe book/instruction manual inside) just a few months ago, but I can’t imagine making mashed potatoes without it now! It’s actually good for a lot of otherwise time consuming cooking, I should write an article about that.

So far this week, I have added four articles to the site – one for each section and yes, all from projects or recipes done and photographed months ago. However, they are all good projects and recipes!

These are Pecan Pie Cookies, they have been officially counted as the 7th cookie of the year, baked back in February. I know, as if I’m only posting them now, but here they are – in all their pecan pie glory. They have all the pecany, brown sugary, buttery (and even slightly creamy) taste and texture of a pecan pie with the portability of a cookie. I know, I know. You’re welcome. Go make some. I’ll wait here.
This torte was pulled from Smitten Kitchen, and just like everything else I pull from there, it was very, very good. It’s not fussy at all, and while its technically a summer squash, I used a butternut squash and cooked it in the dead of winter!
Making mineral makeup was so fun!! Everything from knowing what’s actually in the makeup that I put on the biggest organ of my body, to being able to control the exact colours and richness is just amazing. Not to mention you can say you made your own (which is rad enough) and compared to other mineral makeup of the same quality, there is a decent savings there too!
This hat is really really cool, but it’s also an epic fail if we’re determining success by wearability. Intended as a 31st birthday gift for a man with at least an average size head, it might fit Wee One #1. I decided to write about it anyway though because the pattern is great, and the finished product, while totally useless to the person I had intended it for, turned out better than I expected it to. I really love to do any kind of colourwork, but I usually sequester intarsia work to one room, out of the children’s grasp, so as not to walk into a room with yarn barf all over the place. Anyhoo, these were made in one room and somehow also made pretty quickly, for me anyway.

Tomorrow I’ll add more articles to the site and blog about them here! There are so many fun things I’ve made that I can’t wait to show off. Homemade Tater Tots, anyone??

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Deceptively Delicious – Coffee Cake

Domestic, Healthy

In this post, I’m participating in Tempt My Tummy Tuesdays, Tuesdays at the Table, Tuesday Night Supper Club, and Hearth ‘n Soul.

I mentioned a few days ago that I’d be cooking and baking my way through Jessica Seinfeld’s Deceptively Delicious cookbook this year, and I’m not making you wait! Her butternut squash infused coffee cake was my first project, and it was fun!

Every recipe in this book sneaks in a nutrient packed veggie or fruit. They’re all pureed ahead of time (though there’s no reason you can’t just make the puree before you make the recipe). So before we get into the recipe, let’s talk about pureeing the squash in the first place, shall we? I swear, it’s a cinch!

Just cut the stem off, cut the squash in half lengthwise and scrape out the seeds. Put them fleshy side down on a baking sheet and roast them naked for about 45 minutes. Then just scoop the flesh out and pop it in your blender or food processor till it’s baby food! Tah-dah!

 
 

Coffee Cake (with butternut squash) – from Deceptively Delicious (p. 61)

Batter:
1 cup firmly packed light or dark brown sugar
4 tbsp Becel
1 1/4 cups low fat buttermilk or nonfat milk
1 cup reduced fat sour cream
1 large egg
2 tsp vanilla extract
2 cups whole wheat flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup butternut squash puree
1/2 cup mini-marshmallows
Topping:
1/2 cup chopped pecans or walnuts
1/4 cup firmly packed light or dark brown sugar
2 tsp cinnamon

 

I’ll warn you right now that after following the directions to beat the sugar and the butter till creamy and then add 1 cup of the buttermilk, sour cream, egg and vanilla it did not look pretty (left). However, just like that vanilla cake I made a lot of last year, once I added the flour, baking powder, cinnamon and salt it started to look a whole lot better (right).

 

Then comes the super weird part. Pour half the batter into your buttered or sprayed cake pan (9″ will do it) and smooth out the top. Now, spread your cup of squash puree over the batter. I know, right? THEN, sprinkle with the mini marshmallows and, as you can see, half a cup doesn’t totally cover the cake but I don’t think it’s supposed to. Now, take the rest of the milk (1/4 cup) and the other half of the batter, mix them together and then spread over the squash filling and marshmallows.

 

Now mix your topping ingredients together and sprinkle that over the batter. Bake at 350 for about 45 minutes.

My crust looks burnt, but it’s not bad at all. The photo in the book has a dark looking crust as well. This cake is probably the heaviest cake (for it’s size) that I’ve ever made, very dense – and also very good. I like squash anyway, but you can’t taste it at all.

P to the S, your leftover butternut squash puree can be frozen for months or made into soup. I looooove butternut squash, and at just 63 calories a cup, if you’re careful how you prep the soup it can be a really filling and healthy low cal snack!

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Deceptively Delicious 2011

Domestic, Healthy

05. January 25 – Ranch Dressing

04. January 20 – Spaghetti and Meatballs

03. January 11 – French Toast (with banana)

02. January 6 – Chocolate Pudding (with avocado)

01. January 4 – Coffee Cake (with butternut squash)

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