SQUASH BROWNIES for TASTY TUESDAY

Here’s another recipe from my upcoming “Seat of My Pants Cookbook”***.

On leftover patrol in my fridge this morning what did I spy but a bowl of leftover mashed squash (a mix of acorn and butternut that I had roasted in the oven). It was plain & waiting to be dressed up, but I just wasn’t feeling it. I had the choice of either dumping it or making it into some kind of treat for Gizmo. “Waste not, want not” Ben Franklin said, so it was time to put on my Official S.O.M.P. Chef Hat (Soon to be available at Williams Sonoma – I wish!) and come up with something.

First I set the oven to 350*, figuring that would be a good temperature for almost anything I created. I placed the squash (about 3 cups worth) into a mixing bowl and smashed it up a bit more…then tossed in an egg, some garlic powder, a splash of chicken stock and one of olive oil…then mixed that all together really well… I dumped in some flour (you can see how “gourmet” the S.O.M.P.  cookbook is…I “dump in” ingredients often)  about ¼ cup at  a time, mixing as I went…I probably used about ¾ C flour in all. Now I had something that looked a lot like orange brownie batter…way too moist and sticky to roll out into cookies. Not wanting to overload the recipe with flour for fear of it getting too gummy, I paused, then  glanced over at the dish rack and spotted an 8” x 10” glass baking dish…brainstorm! A quick squirt of pan spray, then dump (see, there it is again) the batter into the dish,  and popped into that preheated 350*oven for about 20”-25” (using the toothpick method…remove from the oven when the toothpick comes out clean).

When the toothpick came out clean the pan came out of the oven, and I set it to cool slightly,  and then turned out the “cake” onto a board. I cut the “cake” into small squares, about ½” x 1/2” .  Now it was Gizmo’s turn to put on his Official Dawg Treat Tastetester Hat (we’re big on Official Hats around here)  and try one just to see if I was on to anything…Yep, he liked it…a lot…but they were very soft. Now if you’ve got a lot of dogs these won’t be around for long and you can stop here…but with just Gizmo I wanted to dry them out a bit for storage purposes (even though I would be keeping them in the fridge). So back into a 200* oven for about an hour…still not really hard, but nice and dry and ready for storage I let Gizmo taste test them again (he kept his hat on of course) and knew I was on to a winner.

Total prep time: 5”

Total baking time: 60″- 90″

Total time for Gizmo to eat one: Milliseconds

This is really quick and easy, so there’s no excuse for not baking up something yummy for your furballs.

*** NB This book does not exist and will not be available soon on Amazon.

Thanks to Sugar the Golden Retriever and Kol’s Notes for hosting the Tasty Tuesday Blog Hop. Hop on over to see what everyone is cooking today.