Recipe exchange experiment: Butternut squash bake and fudge

So the recipe exchange experiment was pretty much a failure on my end, but I did get two recipes out of it.

Butternut squash bake

• 1/3 Cup butter, softened
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 5oz can evaporated milk
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 2 cups mashed, cooked butternut squash

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease an 11X7 baking dish.
• Cream butter and granulated sugar. Beat in eggs, milk and vanilla.
• Stir in Squash, pour into pan. Bake 45 min or until almost set.
• Topping: combine either crushed Special K or Rice Krispies (1/2 cup), 1/2 cup of packed brown sugar, 1/4 chopped pecans and 2 tbsp melted butter
• Sprinkle on topping after 45 minutes and bake another 5-10 minutes or until bubbly

Sadly, it uses eggs, with which I can’t even cheat. Perhaps there’s some other way I could make this with Ener-G Egg Replacer or some other binding substitute. I probably wouldn’t be able to “beat in” such a substitute like you would eggs, but if you combined all the ingredients and included a binding substitute, perhaps it would still bake similarly. But I’m just guessing here. I’m also wondering if canned coconut milk would be a passable substitute for evaporated milk??? I have no idea.

Here’s the second recipe — it’s for a single serving of fudge cooked in a microwave-safe bowl:

• Cook a half square of Bakers unsweetened chocolate and a tablespoon of butter or margarine together in the microwave for a minute on high. It should come to a boil.
• Remove the bowl and add a half cup of confectioners sugar and stir in thoroughly. If you can be patient, it should turn into a nice consistency fudge with some stirring. If not, then a little more sugar is needed.

According to the sender, “This is a homemade recipe and there is no science behind it, but it is delicious.”

Even though this uses a little butter, it sounds super easy so I’ll probably try it sometime in the future. And I might try it with a butter substitute, like the soy-free Earth Balance, which is the most butter-like I’ve found.