Deliciously gooey and chocolately but hiding a healthy secret, these Butternut Squash Brownies from Dawn Quest at Meals Our Kids Love are the perfect dessert or family treat.

These Butternut Squash Brownies are about as easy as it gets: no particular baking skills required. The result is a lovely, gooey brownie packed full of flavour and a little bit of goodness.

This recipe works just as well with frozen squash as it does with fresh so you don’t have to wait till the autumn to enjoy this one. When using frozen squash, thaw it thoroughly first and then weigh it. I found about 240g of frozen butternut squash gave me about 120g thawed.

I also swapped out the sugar for maple syrup. With all the media attention on the negative impact of processed sugar, I’m keen to explore other more natural ways of sweetening baked goodies and I’ve found using maple syrup to be a really lovely-tasting alternative. This means you won’t be creaming eggs and sugar together like a more traditional brownie recipe – it’s just a matter of stirring the syrup in.

For this recipe I’ve suggested you can use either cocoa powder, drinking chocolate or raw cacao – whatever you have to hand. Cocoa is slightly more bitter than drinking chocolate so you might want to increase the amount of maple syrup you use. I’ve found raw cacao to be somewhere in between cocoa and drinking chocolate sweet/bitter-wise.

Makes approx 12 brownies
Prep Time: 10 minutes
Cook Time: 30 minutes

Ingredients
• 120g butternut squash, pureed
• 4-5 Tbsp Maple syrup
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla essence
• 80g plain flour
• 50g cocoa, drinking chocolate or raw cacao powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 100g chocolate chips (milk or dark)
• 1 Tbsp butter

Instructions
1. Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas Mark 4
2. Grease an 8-inch square baking dish or pan with the butter.
3. Combine the butternut squash, eggs, maple syrup and vanilla essence in a bowl and mix well.
4. Sift the flour, salt, cocoa powder, baking powder and cinnamon together in a bowl.
5. Add the flour mix to the butternut squash and mix well.
6. Gently fold in the chocolate chips.
7. Pour the batter into the greased pan and pop in the oven for 25 to 30 minutes.
8. The brownies are done when a wooden skewer comes out clean.
9. Turn onto a cooling rack and cool completely before cutting into squares.