The Trooper

During a summer of disappointing crops — mealy, tasteless tomatoes; sullen basil; green pomegranates; and squirrel-ravaged beans — there was one bright spot in my garden. My butternut plants yielded 11 lovely, large fruit. The vines spread all over the patio and invaded their neighboring planter boxes, but I let them misbehave as long as they produced.

For about a month now, I’ve been trying to use up the squash: roasting cubes along with a chicken, adding mashed squash to cornmeal mush, and giving one to our housecleaner, Francisca, who praised my calabazas bonitas and described the cinnamon-enhanced turnovers she makes from them.

But my favorite use for them is a squash cake found in The Victory Garden Cookbook, a lifesaver for gardener-cooks. The only difficult part of the recipe is peeling a squash, steaming and mashing it. If you used canned pumpkin, it’s the easiest cake on the planet.

Butternut Squash Cake

1 & 2/3 cup sugar

1 cup vegetable oil

4 eggs

1 & 3/4 cup mashed squash or one can pumpkin

2 cups flour (or whole-wheat pastry flour)

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons cinnamon

a good grating of nutmeg

Preheat oven to 350° and grease a 13x8x2-inch pan. Mix the sugar and oil together; beat in eggs one at a time. Beat in squash until well mixed. Stir together the dry ingredients and add to the wet mixture. Pour into the pan and bake for 25 to 30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out dry.