Golden Squash Chocolate-Chip Muffins

It was a snow day! And I had a glowering squash, face penciled in by a gourd-averse boyfriend, whose time was come.

Why was the gourd so pensive? Did he/she know he/she would one day be muffins?

I discovered a recipe a year or so ago for muffins so tender and moist, they taste more like shaped oatmeal than something that could go stale (to make them breakfast-worthy, I use half oats and throw in a hefty amount of flax). To do the squash justice and sweeten its ovenbound fate, I decided to forego butter and buttermilk for coconut oil and coconut milk, throw in some island spices, add a splash of bourbon, and shower the batter with chocolate chips. The results were golden treats that stick to the ribs and warm you on the chilliest of mornings.

makes 6 large muffins and two medium ones or 12-14 medium muffins

Ingredients

1 butternut squash
1/3 cup coconut oil
2/3 cup white sugar
1/3 cup light brown sugar
2 eggs
splash bourbon or rum

1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp ginger
1/4 tsp grated nutmeg
1/8 tsp cayenne
dash salt

1 cup white flour
1 cup oats
1/3 cup flax (optional)
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda

5 oz dark chocolate chips (half a bag) 
1 cup coconut milk (I used lite)
1 tsp vinegar

Process

Preheat the oven to 400. Halve your squash with a large knife, scrape out the seeds, and scrape out most of the stringy bits with a spoon.

Rub the cut sides of the squash down with coconut oil. Place the squash on a baking sheet cut-side down and bake for 40 minutes, or until a knife easily pierces a squash half. Take the squash out of the oven.

Lower the heat to 350.

Allow the squash halves to cool. Scrape the squash into a bowl, leaving the rind forlorn and in tatters in your sink. Puree the squash so as to meld the stringy bits into one golden mush (I did this using an electric beater and ended up with squash streaks all over my walls. Kitchen decoration is a bonus!)

Add the coconut oil, sugars, eggs, and bourbon or rum. Puree or otherwise mix until wet ingredients are uniform. Inhale.

Add spices and salt, then sift in flour. Add oats, flax, baking powder, and baking soda. Mix gingerly (ha ha!) until mostly combined.

Set out your coconut milk. Add the vinegar, stir, and let sit so that the mixture turns into coconut buttermilk.

Shake chocolate chips into the batter and combine until the batter is as full of chocolate promise as you want.

Pour the coconut milk into the batter and stir gently until you get a moist, uniform mixture.

Grease 2 medium muffin tins or 1 large muffin tin. You will probably have some extra batter, so you may want to have another tin handy.

For medium muffins, bake for 20 minutes, or until a knife inserted comes out mostly clean.

For large muffins, bake for 35 minutes.

Let cool on a rack.

Notes

• Should you decide to go with more conventional ingredients, use 1 stick of butter, softened, in place of the coconut oil, and 1 cup of milk or buttermilk in place of the coconut milk (no need for vinegar if you're using buttermilk).
• I used bourbon because I didn't have any rum, but I REALLY wanted to use rum. 
• Do not eat more than one of these if you're not in a position to take a long nap.

Verdict

4 stars. These make for a pleasing and nutritious breakfast that will give you the caloric boost you need to get through an unseasonably cold March day.

Grand Marnier-Double Chocolate Macaroons

These are Smitten Kitchen's dark chocolate macaroons with one important exception: they contain booze. Grand Marnier was what I had on hand, but rum would have done just as well. You can see some non-chocolate stragglers here: we'll get to those in another blog post. In the meantime, these are soft, fudgy, and even more brownie-like than a brownie itself. You will never crack open a carton of Manischewitz again!

yields about 25 macaroons

Ingredients

4 oz unsweetened chocolate
400 grams sweetened, flaked coconut
2/3 cup sugar
6 Tbsp cocoa powder
3 egg whites
dash of salt
dash vanilla extract
prolonged glug of Grand Marnier or another spirit

Process

Preheat your oven to 325. Line a baking sheet or two with parchment paper.

In a double boiler or the Tipsy Crumpet's very own pan-in-a-bigger-pan-of-heated-water, melt half of the chocolate (two ounces). Break up the other half. When the first half is melted, remove the pan from the heat and stir in the other half. It will soften like the dulcet tones of a wood thrush.

In a food processor like the Tipsy Crumpet's brand-new Cuisinart, blend the coconut for one minute.

Pour in the sugar and cocoa powder (no need for sifting). Blend for another minute. This will look really cool as you'll see the white and black layers, separate at first, mix into one. The chocolate macaroon: a metaphor for racial harmony!

Add the salt, vanilla, Grand Marnier or other spirits, and egg whites (I crack the whites into a bowl separately first to make sure there are no shells). Blend until combined.

Pour in the chocolate. Scrape the pan to get as much out as you can. When the river of chocolate has flooded the craggy mound of coconut goo, blend again.

Either empty the batter into a bowl or remove the blade from the food processor and shape the batter from there. You can scoop out the batter with an ice-cream scoop, but what's the fun in that? Using your bare hands like the Tipsy Crumpet, plop golf-ball sized mounds of batter onto the baking sheet. No need to shape them.

Bake for 10-12 minutes or, if you have a more sluggish oven than mine 15.

Remove and keep in the pan for 10 minutes, then cool on a wire rack.

Notes

• Remember, unsweetened chocolate; sweetened coconut.
• It would be delightful to grate an orange peel into this.
• Rum would be just as good as Grand Marnier. So would whiskey.
• You could add some sliced almonds and almond extract for chocolate-almond macaroons.

 

Verdict

5 stars. I would make these even if it weren't Passover, and I don't even like coconut.