Because I Bragged About My Rice Cooker: Kabocha Pumpkin Bread

Do you guys know what this is? This is known as Kabocha, an Asian variety of winter squash. It is commonly called the Japanese pumpkin or the kabocha squash in North America. It's always a deep green on the outside but the inside can range from an intense yellow to orange color. It is naturally extremely sweet (sweeter than butternut squash) and its flesh is thick; it almost feels like you're eating a yam or sweet potato. 

By the way, Kabocha is sold at the farmer's market now! And I've seen an abundance of them at price chopper recently! 

I've never tried making kabocha bread before but I figured if normal pumpkin bread can be done, so can kabocha bread. And since kabocha is naturally sweet, and going along with our sugar theme, I wanted to try baking just using the natural sweetness of the kabocha. However, I had a super ripe banana that I needed to get rid of as well, so I also mashed that in as a natural sweetener. 

Ingredients:

1.5 cups whole wheat flour

1 tsp baking powder

1 cup kabocha, mashed (about half)

1 ripe banana, mashed

1/4 cup milk

1 egg

1 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp salt

~ 1 tsp fresh ginger, grated

1. Stick the whole Kabocha in the oven at 375 for about an hour. Let it cool for about 10-15 minutes before cutting it.

2. Meanwhile, mix the dry ingredients together: flour, baking powder, cinnamon, salt.

3. Grate a generous teaspoon of fresh ginger. 

4. Cut the Kabocha in half and scoop out the seeds. Scoop out the flesh of the squash and mash. You need approximately 1 cup of mashed Kabocha, which is probably slightly less than half the squash. Mash in the banana. 

5. Add the rest of the wet ingredients into your mashed Kabocha and banana: milk, egg, ginger. Mix well and then pour that into your dry ingredients bowl. Mix well.

6. Coat rice cooker lightly with oil and place your mixture in.

7. Cook in the "white rice" setting. One round is approximately 40 minutes. I found that it was not long enough for mine, as different brands of rice cookers have different heat settings, so my bread went through two cycles in the "white rice" setting. 

VOILA!