I love adding vegetables in unexpected places, which means kids will love this recipe for sweet and cinnamon yummy Yellow Squash Muffins!
So today’s recipe may seem a little on the odd side. Even my mother said, “You put squash in a muffin?!” Yes. Yes, I did, and they are delicious! These mighty yellow squash muffins were indeed born out of desperation. You see, my lovely little garden produced a rather large bumper crop of summer squash. So large, in fact, that I froze about 15-18lbs of yellow squash and it does freeze very well. Unfortunately, there aren’t a whole lot of things you can do with it. While it is great to use in a stir fry and the yellow squash pan fries very well, that is about all the options I knew of and I still had a LOT left over. That got me to thinking about my zucchini muffins recipe and I decided, why not?
Summer squash has a natural buttery quality that I hoped would work well in my experiment. Also, I am firmly becoming a believer that you can cover up any weird taste by adding enough cinnamon so adjusting my recipe seemed like it might just work. And the results? Fabulous. Since this recipe makes 24 muffins, I even tested them out on my poor unsuspecting sweet neighbors and co-workers. I have already been asked for the recipe several times so that is a winner. (And the squash is put to good use!)
Ok, so here are my personal notes on the yellow squash muffin recipe (also found on the recipe card when you print it). First, muffins are always best served warm, and these summer squash muffins are no exception. Pop them in the microwave for 15 seconds and enjoy! Secondly, I listed unsweetened applesauce but, honestly, use whatever applesauce is on hand unless it is flavored like strawberry or something. Those six-packs that you can buy for to-go lunches are perfect. Also, the squash preparation whether you are using fresh summer squash or frozen is the same. Drain as much liquid as you can from them.
This is making me wonder what other vegetables I can put in muffins. Hmmmm….
| Prep Time | 20 minutes |
| Cook Time | 20 minutes |
| Passive Time | 30 minutes |
| Servings | standard muffins |
- 2 cups squash
- 3 Eggs
- 3 cups Flour
- 1 tsp Baking Soda
- 1 tsp Baking Powder
- 2 tsp cinnamon
- 1 tsp Salt
- 1 cup sugar
- 3/4 cup Brown Sugar
- 1/2 cup oil
- 1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce
- 2 tsp Vanilla
- 1 cup chopped pecans
Ingredients
| |
- Preheat oven to 350. Grease muffin tins or use muffin liners.
- Prepare squash. For fresh, slice and place on paper towels for at least 30 minutes and blot as necessary. If using frozen squash, thaw and drain. Press into colander to remove as much liquid as possible. Chop squash in a food processor until diced (about the size of corn kernels).
- In a mixing bowl, blend oil, applesauce, and eggs together. Add vanilla, sugar, and brown sugar. Mix until smooth. In a separate bowl, whisk flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon together. One cup at a time, add dry mixture to wet and blend before adding next cup until all are just mixed. Using a spoon, stir in the squash. Stir in nuts. Spoon batter to ¾ full in muffin tins. Bake for 16-20 minutes or until golden brown. Increase baking time for larger muffins.
I list unsweetened applesauce but sweetened or cinnamon applesauce is fine. Do not use fruit flavored applesauce. This is a lighter version muffin so if you do not want to use applesauce, you can substitute a half cup of oil (for a total of 1 cup).
If you like nuts, add an extra half cup of pecans.
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Question: can the nuts be left out, or must they be replaced? If they must be replaced, what non-nut ingredient can you suggest, please? Thank you!
The nuts can easily be left out if you like. Enjoy!
you only mention baking soda in the instructions and not baking powder, but mention baking powder and soda in the ingredients. Can you clarify? And are the amounts correct? It should be the same amount of powder and soda? Thanks!
Good catch! Sometimes it is easy to miss something like that since I know the standard. The ingredients are correct and the correct amounts. Sorry about the leaving it out of the instructions. It goes in the dry ingredients at the same time as the baking soda.
These look great and I have the squash ready to go. Do you leave the outer skin on the squash? Also, what do you mean you “shred the squash with a cheese grater”? The recipe says you use a food processor. Thanks in advance for clarifying!
Actually, I have used both a food processor and a cheese grater. I usually slice and freeze the yellow squash when I get too much from the garden. You can’t grate it from thawed so I use a food processor. However, if it is fresh I usually just grate it. Either way is completely fine for the recipe and won’t change the result. Enjoy!
Oops, forgot to answer the the skin question. Yes, I leave the skin on and grate it with a large hole grater or a food processor.
Do you cook the squash before adding to muffin recipe or leave uncooked?
Whether fresh or thawed from frozen, you can leave it uncooked. I shred the squash with a cheese grater (the larger holes if there is a choice) so it is pretty thin and incorporates well in the muffins. Happy to help!
This looks absolutely delicious! Thanks so much for sharing it at Tasty Tuesday where you’ve been featured and pinned!