Jamie Oliver is a food god. A king of the culinary. I was hesitant about this recipe but it turned out better than expected, the perfect combination of crunchy walnut, sweet butternut pumpkin and little bursts of brown sugar lumps. Resist eating this straight out of the oven, it tastes better after the flavours get to mingle and know each other for a day or two.
ingredients:
- 400g butternut pumpkin with the skin on, it seems odd but it works
- 350g light soft brown sugar
- 4 large free-range eggs
- sea salt
- 300g plain flour
- 2 heaped teaspoons baking powder
- handful of walnuts
- 1 heaped teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 175ml extra virgin oil
for the frosting: (I love that word, frosting, so much better than icing)
- zest of 1 clementine, I used an orange instead
- zest of 1 lemon
- juice of 1/2 a lemon
- 140ml sour cream
- 2 heaped teaspoons sifted icing sugar
- 1 vanilla pod, split length ways and seeds scraped out
- Preheat oven to 180 C/350 F. Line muffin tin with paper cases, or grease cake tin.
- Whiz the squash in a food processor until finally chopped. Whiz for 30 seconds with the walnuts. If your food processor is big enough, add the sugar, salt, eggs, flour, cinnamon, virgin olive oil and baking powder. If it’s not, mix all of these in a big bowl until everything is combined and moist. Don’t over-mix, you don’t want this to look like cake batter.
- Fill the muffin tin or cake tray with the mixture. Bake for 20-25 mins. If a wooden skewer comes out clean, it’s cooked. Remove from the oven and leave to cool on a wire rack.
- Make the runny frosted topping by mixing the clementine zest, all the lemon zest and the lemon juice into a bowl. Add the sour cream, icing sugar and vanilla seeds. Mix well and taste. If you think you want more sour, add more lemon juice, if you want more sweet, add icing sugar. It’s a personal taste. Put it into the fridge. You want to put the toppings on just as the cakes are served, otherwise it doesn’t keep that well. Jamie recommends decorating with rose petals and dried lavender flowers, but I didn’t have any around.
- Eat and know that you’ve done your healthy deed for the day. Yum!
The recipe was taken from the wonderful book Jamie at home.