Recently we made a squash puree enriched with pressure cooked country ham skin instead of butter. The rich decadence of the Benton's ham took the squash to an ethereal level of decadence. We initially used the puree to complement a version of our sunflower seed risotto. And still I believed we could do more with this puree.
Along the lines of inspirations the color orange, the tint which is slowly accenting the leaf tips around us, has sparked a recent dessert. The other elements, yes orange, are still in the works. The base of the dessert is this squash and pork cake. The cake is quite simple: some flour, the squash and county ham puree, brown sugar, smoked paprika, a bit of butter and creme fraiche, eggs and some chemical leaveners.
The resulting cake is light, moist, screaming with squash, accented with spice and enriched with a distant and familiar flavor, a taste which is on the tip of your tongue yet unable to be released--the flavor of Benton's country ham.
While my initial idea is the color orange, we may opt to just serve this cake. It is that good.
