Get the recipe: Organic Cacao Butternut Squash Muffins

If you’ve been following our culinary escapades at #ContentKitchen, you’ll have noticed that chocolate often makes an appearance! Not only is it delicious, but cacao is truly a superfood with a host of impressive benefits: aside from being a mood and brain booster, consumption can lead to a healthier heart (read more about it here) and diabetes and stress prevention. So we’re prone to sneak it into our food at any given opportunity! Only in its original cacao, raw form of course!

We’ve asked Carey Davis-Munro, founder of Sweet Virtues (our latest raw chocolate addiction) to share one of her favourite chocolate-infused sweet recipes, to satisfy your sweet tooth cravings in a nutritious, healthy and delicious way. Her organic chocolate butternut squash mixed flour muffins make the ideal home-made treat for Valentine’s Day.

The muffins are made with spelt, an ancient grain. Tasty and nutritious it was one of the first grains to be grown by early farmers as long ago as 5000 BC. Also used by the Romans, spelt preceded wheat and has a higher nutritional value and mineral content. It is also more plentiful in simple and complex carbohydrates. Spelt grain is higher in protein and Vitamins B and E and it is also digestible by some people with wheat allergies. Spelt is not however gluten free.

Ingredients (Makes 15 – 20 cakes)

• 350 g Organic coconut sugar
• 400g Chopped butternut squash
• 4 Large Free Range organic eggs
• 100g Organic Spelt flour
• 50g Organic raw cacao powder
• 100g Organic Rice flour
• 50g Organic Cornflour
• 50g Organic Dark Chocolate
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• ½ teaspoon Xantham Gum (available at most good health shops and necessary for wheat free cooking – helps to bind the ingredients)
• 175 ml Extra virgin organic olive oil
• 4 drops vanilla essence or vanilla pod

We love these as they are, but for those that can’t resist icing – try these. Our pick is the dark chocolate of course!

• Melted organic dark chocolate drizzled over the cakes

OR

• 1 small tub of cream cheese/marscapone
• 100g melted butter cooled down
• 3 tbsps of raw cane icing sugar sifted
• 1 tbsp raw cacao powder

OR

• 100g Butter
• 3 tbsps raw cane icing sugar
• 1 tbsp
• Few drops vanilla essence OR 1 vanilla pod
• Walnuts or dried fruit for decoration

Method

1. Pre heat oven to 180 degrees and line a muffin tin with cases

2. Whizz squash in the mixer for a couple of minutes until finely chopped but no more

3. Add sugar and eggs and mix again

4. Grind or break chocolate with a rolling pin in to tiny pieces ( approx 0.5mm, no bigger)

5. Add flours, baking powder, chocolate and xantham gum and mix to combine well, but no longer

6. Add the olive oil and combine once more

7. Transfer to cake cases and cook in oven for approx 15 to 20 minutes

8. While cakes are baking choose one of the two toppings. Simply combine all ingredients for either topping together and apply liberally to top of cakes when they are cooled. We always use butter as 100% fat and therefore usually unsuitable for those with dairy allergies or lactose intolerant and we believe healthier than many alternatives in small quantities.

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