Sweet Corn Bread (with secret ingredient)

When I was growing up, my mom always had a good sized garden.  One thing that she seemed to grow a lot of was various squash and pumpkins.  Since we usually bout our Halloween pumpkins from a local farm, and we never had squash as a side dish (as far as I knew) at dinner, I eventually got old enough to wonder why in the world she grew so much of something we never ate.  Often, we would have corn bread as a side dish a dinner, being a picky eater, that would be the majority of what I would eat.  Sometimes, when we got home from school, my mom would have a not TOO sweet but still delicious snack cake waiting for us as an after school snack.  I went off to college, not knowing why my mother grew squash.

My sophomore year of college, one of my roommates made cornbread with a special ingredient.  The secret ingredient was yellow cake mix.  It was very sweet but I thought it was much too dry and crumbly compared to what I was used to.  When I made my weekly phone call home I mentioned in passing to my moth about the overly dry cornbread.  It was then that my mom told me HER secret ingredient, which was pureed squash!  What?  How sneaky!  As a picky kid all I could tell was that it was sweet and moist.  My kids also enjoy this cornbread.  My mom would cook and then puree the squash when it was ripe and then freeze it in small quantities in Ziploc bags in the freezer so she could make her sneaky healthier recipes all year long!  I late deduced that the snack cakes must have been secretly healthy too, after all, squash grew really well in her garden.

SWEET CORN BREAD

1/2 cup butter, soffened
1/2 cup sugar
2 eggs
1  1/2 cups flour
1 cup cornmeal
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp baking powder
1  1/2 cups milk (we use skim)
1 cup cooked, pureed squash

Mix ingredients well.  Pour into a greased 9 x 13 inch pan ( or 8 inch square pan if you like thicker cornbread).  Bake at 375 degrees for 20 minutes.