Feeling a bit like Fall

The temperature decided it was time for a change and let us all know by blowing out the badness of the late summer heat and left us with the briskness of Fall. With each degree drop, i thought oh yes it's almost that time again. The time when butternut and pumpkins come out and beg to be roasted, chopped, mixed into tasty treats to fill you right up.

Get ready to make your home smell like the holidays!

Essentials
14oz butternut squash, skin on, deseeded and roughly chopped
2 1/4 cups light soft brown sugar
4 large free-range or organic eggs
sea salt
2 1/2 cups plain flour, unsifted
2 heaped teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoon ground cinnamon - I prefer grinding down a stick in my coffee grinder.
3/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
Optional
A handful of walnuts

Frosting
zest of 1 lemon and juice of ½ a lemon
1/2 cup soured cream
2 heaped tablespoons icing sugar, sifted
1 vanilla pod, split lengthways and seeds scraped out

Get your oven preheated to 350°F. You can either go with pre-lined muffin/cupcake cups or a muffin tin. I also love using mini muffin pans for parties as these bite sized portions are really irresistible.

Pulse the squash in a food processor until finely chopped. Add the sugar, and crack in the eggs. As I don't have an commercial size processor, I transfer this my mixer. It makes things far easier in my opinion. Add a pinch of salt, the flour, baking powder, walnuts (if you want), cinnamon and olive oil and whiz together until well beaten. You may need to pause the machine at some point to scrape the mix down the sides with a rubber spatula. Try not to overdo it with the mixing – you want to just combine everything and no more.

Fill the paper cases with the cake mixture. Bake in the preheated oven for 20 to 25 minutes. Check to see whether they are cooked properly by sticking a wooden skewer or a knife right into one of the cakes – if it comes out clean, they’re done. If it’s a bit sticky, pop them back into the oven for a little longer. Remove from the oven and leave the cakes to cool on a wire rack.

As soon as the muffins are in the oven, make your runny frosted topping. Place most of the clementine zest, all the lemon zest and the lemon juice in a bowl. Add the soured cream, icing sugar and vanilla seeds and mix well. Remember to taste this mixture and correct the mix accordingly. Set in your fridge to chill until your muffins are ready to bathed in this tastiness.