Butternut Squash Indian Pudding

As I've said before, my garden is producing TONS of butternut squash, which is great, because I love squash, but I'd also want to get the rest of my family to eat squash too, so I need to get creative. (And by that I mean I need to look for recipes because I'm not at all creative in the kitchen!)  So I dug out some old Vegetarian Times and found a recipe I had flagged, but never tried.  It was under there One Food 5 Ways section and the topic was Butternut Squash. 
Of course I was drawn to the dessert, Indian Pudding, but I also have a weird fascination with Olde Timey food.  One Christmas my dinner theme was Dickens and we had food I imagine was served during the writing of A Christmas Carol, including Plum Pudding.  So the Indian Pudding appealed to me on a few levels.  (It's an Olde Timey New England classic.)  It took longer to bake than the recipe said, so I increased the oven temp to 300 and that seemed to work better.  I of course served it with the ice cream, as suggested. 

Butternut Squash Indian Pudding

Serves 6

Indian pudding is an old-fashioned New England dessert made with cornmeal and molasses. It's delicious, but not the prettiest dessert, so we've given it a makeover by adding butternut squash and baking it. Serve with vanilla ice cream.

• ½ small butternut squash
• 2 cups 1% milk
• ⅓ cup yellow cornmeal
• ½ tsp. ground cinnamon
• ¼ tsp. ground ginger
• ⅛ tsp. ground nutmeg
• 1 large pinch salt
• 1 Tbs. butter
• ¼ cup packed dark brown sugar
• 2 Tbs. blackstrap molasses

1. Preheat oven to 350ºF. Place squash half cut-side down on baking sheet. Bake 1 hour. Cool. Scoop flesh from skin, and purée in food processor.
2. Reduce oven heat to 275ºF. Coat 1-qt. baking dish with cooking spray.
3. Whisk together milk, cornmeal, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and salt in saucepan. Cook over medium heat 10 minutes, or until thickened. Remove from heat, and blend in butter. Stir in squash purée, brown sugar, and molasses. Pour into prepared baking dish, and bake, uncovered, 1 1/2 hours, or until knife tip inserted in center comes out clean.
(October 2011 p.63)