Butternut squash coffee cupcakes

We had quarter of a butternut squash left over from cooking dinner yesterday, so I turned to one of my favourite cookbooks, Harry Eastwood’s 'Red Velvet and Chocolate Heartache', to see if I could find something to bake with it.  This recipe is adapted from her 'cappuccino cupcakes' recipe which uses sweet potato, but butternut squash worked brilliantly.  The book is full of amazing recipes for baking with vegetables – and these were no exception, like all the recipes I've tried from the book they always turn out perfectly.  Whenever I make any of these vegetable cakes though, I’ve discovered the trick is to not tell people what the secret ingredient is until after they’ve eaten at least a good mouthful of cake – people are often very hesitant about the idea but surprised and amazed when they find out what makes it so moist and unusual. I took these to work to try to liven up a Monday morning team meeting!

Ingredients

2 eggs

6 oz caster sugar

7 oz peeled and finely grated butternut squash

3 tbsp Camp coffee essence

4 oz self-raising flour

3 oz ground almonds

1 tsp baking powder

Pinch of salt

For the icing

2 oz unsalted butter, cold and cubed

8 oz icing sugar

2 oz cream cheese

2 tsp Camp coffee essence

To decorate

Butterscotch chips

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 180°C and line a cupcake tin with 16 paper cases.
2. Whisk the eggs and sugar in a large mixing bowl until pale and quadrupled in size.
3. Add the grated sweet potato and coffee essence and whisk again.
4. Sift in the flour, ground almonds, baking powder and salt and whisk until well combined.
5. Spoon the mixture into the paper cases (making each about three quarters full) and bake for 20 minutes until the cakes are risen and a cake tester comes out clean, then leave to cool on a wire rack.
6. To make the icing, whisk the butter with an electric whisk until pale and fluffy.
7. Sift in half of the icing sugar and whisk to create a paste.
8. Add the cream cheese and coffee essence and mix with a wooden spoon to combine (don’t use an electric whisk or over-beat at this stage, as the cream cheese will become too liquid). Refrigerate until ready.
9. Once the cakes are cool, ice them with a spoonful of icing. Decorate with a sprinkling of butterscotch chips.