Golden Nugget Muffins

It's a beautiful fall morning this morning. Only in the 40s when I took Sallie out for her morning walk. Brr... (although I still wore flip flops). I thought, "This would be a perfect morning for cocoa and muffins for breakfast." As you might remember, I have an abundance of squash, so I set about finding a muffin recipe using squash.

I found something that would work on allrecipes.com. I made a few changes, and these turned out so tasty!

Ingredients:

• 1 small golden nugget squash
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• ½ cup whole wheat flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• ½ cup white sugar
• ¼ tsp salt
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• ½ tsp nutmeg
• ¼ tsp allspice
• ¼ tsp cardamom
• (Cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, and cardamom could be replaced with 2 tsp pumpkin pie spice)
• ¾ cup milk
• 1 egg, beaten
• 1 T butter, melted

Directions:

1. Wash squash. Prick with a fork and microwave for 60 secs. Remove from microwave, cut in half crosswise, and remove seeds. Place both halves in a microwave safe dish, cover with plastic wrap, and microwave for 6 minutes or until fork tender. Puree squash in a food processor. This should yield probably around 1 cup of squash puree, though I didn't actually measure it.

2. Preheat oven to 400°F. Line muffin tin with cupcake liner or spray with cooking spray.

3. While squash is cooking, whisk together dry ingredients (flours, baking powder, sugar, salt, spices).

4. In a heavy duty mixer (KitchenAid®), stir the milk, egg, and butter. Stir in the pureed squash. Gradually stir in the flour mixture until just moistened.

5. Spoon into prepared muffin tin, filling cups about ½ full. Bake 20 minutes in the preheated oven, or until a toothpick inserted in the center of a muffin comes out clean. Remove from muffin tin and cool on a wire rack.

Enjoy with a cup of hot cocoa for a pleasant start to a cool fall day.