Yellow Squash Cake with Icing

This is the time of the year that I am always swimming in garden vegetables. I am fortunate that all my friends and family know that I cook and bake and throughout the summer I am always being dropped off pounds and pounds of vegetables. It is nice to know that I have such a great network of people that know that I will treat their garden fruits and vegetables with love and appreciation when I cook and bake. While I love savory dishes using vegetables, as I have stated numerous times in the past I am a big fan of sweets. So are my two boys who this morning ate an entire batch of brown sugar oatmeal waffles. Since I crave sweets so frequently I have learned to bake cakes, cookies and baked goods with modifications. A major modification that I make to almost all recipes using large amounts of vegetable oil is to substitute with unsweetened apple sauce. It keeps cakes and breads moist without overly effecting the taste or texture. A couple of weeks back I received 15 pounds of yellow squash, so I set about finding a recipe to utilize them in and came across a great recipe for Summer Squash Bread from Allrecipes.com.

This recipe has 9 ingredients. It takes 1 hour of total time and makes 16 servings. I made some major changes to this recipe. First instead of using 1 cup of oil I substituted 1 cup of unsweetened applesauce. I also cut down the sugar to a cup and a half, two cups of sugar was too high for my kids. Make sure to squeeze all the water out of the squash before using. I place my shredded squash between layers of paper towels and squeeze over the sink. You will be able to squeeze a large amount of water out of the squash, keep squeezing until no additional water comes out. Finally, instead of using a loaf pan I baked my bread in a bundt pan. I also topped my finish bread with a powdered sugar/butter glaze. My total baking time was slightly longer since I used a bundt pan, I would approximate 15 additional minutes. I followed the remainder of the recipe as written.

My two boys really liked this recipe. It was easy enough that my oldest son was able to help me bake it and since I baked the cake in a bundt pan it made more than the 16 servings suggested by the recipe. The changes to the oil and sugar made this recipe much healthier without sacrificing on taste. Overall a great way to use garden vegetables.

For the recipe go to Summer Squash Bread.