Acorn Squash Bread: An Experiment

Hello!

Those of you who are friends with me on Facebook know I got a Bountiful Basket this week.  This is a food co-op in many US states from which you order a weekly basket of produce (or, in the winter, bi-weekly).  For our first basket, Anthony and I chose the basic (non-organic) one, and added on an Asian Pack.  You can also order breads, large quantities of one fruit or vegetable (I think those options were carrots and strawberries this time around), and other "Packs," such as the Lunchbox Pack for fruit that goes with your kids' lunches, or the California Pack which looked like it was mostly carrots, cauliflower and broccoli.  The basic basket was $15, plus a $3 first-timer fee (so they could buy the basket) and we paid an extra $15 or so for the Asian Pack.

Click here to see if you can get a Bountiful Basket where you live!

We got lots of fruits and veggies I found familiar. In the basic basket there were two bunches of spinach, two heads of romaine, fresh cilantro and basil, sweet peppers, heirloom tomatoes, lots of apples, oranges and pears, a bunch of bananas and (dramatic reverb)...

An Acorn Squash.

 

Yeah, proper nouns for mystery veggies.

I liked the look of him immediately.  And then I realized I had no idea what Acorn Squash is for, and decided I would bake it.  How?  I didn't decide that until this morning, when The Girl was napping and I was googlin' about this gigantic thing on my counter.

I read that cinnamon went well with acorn squash, and an idea was born:
Pan bread.  Specifically, an adaptation of my Best Banana Bread, a recipe I shared here.

You guys, I think it worked out kind of amazingly well.
First, at the advice of about.com, I pierced the skin in a few places and microwaved the squash for 2 minutes to make it easier to cut in half.  I didn't attempt to halve it before I zapped it.  I took the recommendation as reason enough not to try.

Then, I sliced it in half, scooped out the seeds and fibers, and took a notch out of the back so it would stand up on its own and not weeble-wobble.  (Because it probably would have fallen down, and I only had one.)

For some reason, I was inspired to salt it before I put it in the oven.  I don't know why, but everything turned out okay, so maybe that was a good call.

I roasted the squash at 400F for 60 minutes.  This happened to be exactly how long The Girl stayed asleep.  As a result, the squash cooled completely before I peeled the skin off and mashed it up in a mixing bowl.

Now the fun begins!  You'll need:
6 tablespoons butter, melted*
1/2 acorn squash, roasted and mashed
2/3 cup brown sugar (I used light, but dark would have been better)
1/2 cup white sugar
1/4 tsp ground ginger
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1/2 tsp nutmeg (this increase is because we particularly enjoy nutmeg in my house)
1tbs cinnamon
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp vanilla
1.5 cup flour
* (or use some other kind of liquefied fat/oil, if you're making bread out of squash to be healthy and not out of necessity)

Here's where it starts to sound familiar. Preheat the oven to 350F. Mix the mashed squash, butter and sugar together (both kinds) until they're completely combined.

Then, add in all the spices, and mix them in.  Baking soda isn't a spice, but add it, too.  And the vanilla.
I should have just typed "everything else but the flour."  No regrets.

Finally, add the flour.
Mix everything completely together and then pour it all into a greased loaf pan.  For my weirdo 9.25x5.25 pan, 50 minutes was the perfect baking time at 350F.

And it's actually good!  Reminds me of Autumn and that just feels right when it's still thirty-five degrees outside.

If I could do it all again, I might use a teensy bit less nutmeg or more cinnamon.  There was too much of the former and not enough of the latter, but just barely.  If you used 1/4 tsp of nutmeg instead of going all meth-addict for it, you likely wouldn't have a problem.

Oh, and I buttered the enormous slice I ate because it's bread and that's what you do to bread.  You butter it.

The texture when it was warm was exactly what you'd expect from a pan bread, and that means I succeeded.

Enjoy eating a strangely shaped winter squash as a sweet morning bread!  It tastes even better to me because I improvised a baking recipe! 

Pro tip:  Both this recipe and my banana bread recipe (there will be a link over to the side for that post!) can be made into perfectly soft and wonderful muffins if you bake them for 27 minutes at the same temperature.