Squash Cake

I know, the name of this recipe makes me sound like a caveman ordering you to sit on a cake. No, what I am really asking you to do is to consider making a cake out of vegetable matter. This recipe was made by my sister P. for my father's recent birthday and it's very moist and flavourful. The orange icing is to die for.

Cake Ingredients:
- 4 eggs
- 1 and 2/3 cups of sugar( or 1 cup sugar and ½ cup maple syrup)
- 1 cup of vegetable oil
- 1 and ¾ cups mashed, cooked and cooled winter squash (like butternut, buttercup or hubbard) or tinned pumpkin
- 2 cups of flour
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 1 tsp salt
- 2 tsp cinnamon
- ½ tsp nutmeg

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F. Mix the wet ingredients and sugar together with an electric beater. Sift the dry ingredients together, then stir them into the wet ingredients until well mixed. Pour the batter into a buttered 9 X 13 inch pan and bake for 25-30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the centre of the cake comes out clean. Cool and ice the cake with orange icing.

Icing Ingredients:
- 2 tbsp butter,
- finely grated peel of one orange
- 3 cups icing sugar
- Enough cream or milk to make a fairly spreadable consistency

Beat all of the ingredients together thoroughly with a hand-held mixer until smooth, then spread over the cooled cake.

Editorial Note: First of all, I used tinned pumpkin rather than squash. Then, I baked the cake in the 9 x 13 inch pan as recommended, cut it in half and stacked the two halves together with icing in between to ensure the maximum amount of icing per square inch of cake. I used about twice the amount of butter, and the juice from one orange as well as the zest, plus a little pinch of salt in the icing. Oh, and I used cream rather then milk. The cake seemed pretty healthful to me so I figured I could splurge on the icing.