Maple Butter Glazed Squash and Apples

Who says maple syrup and butter are only for pancakes? This recipe for maple butter glazed squash and apples is so deliciously buttery, rich and just a bit sweet, you will happily choose them instead of pancakes. (Well, maybe!) This recipe does have a secret ingredient – apple cider vinegar! You can’t really pinpoint the vinegar, but it helps to round out and balance the flavor of the maple and butter.

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This recipe is also very straightforward, which I love in a side dish because there’s more time to focus on whatever else you may be cooking for dinner. The most time consuming step is peeling and cubing the squash, apples, and onions. After that the rest of the dish is super easy to assemble. Just mix up the glaze, pour it over the veggies and stir. The oven takes care of the rest! I do recommend stirring once during the cooking time, but I actually don’t mind that. You get to peek at all that beautiful caramelization starting to happen!

Save Time on Peeling Prep:

I had always used a paring knife to peel hard squash like butternut, but it is so time consuming and would leave a lot of the good squash behind. Recently I started peeling butternut with a vegetable peeler instead of a knife and it makes everything so much easier! Because the squash peel is a bit thicker than a potato peel, I had to make a couple swipes to get through to the orange flesh. But, in comparison to going at the tough peel with a knife, this still felt way easier, quicker and safer!

I decided to try this method after buying this OXO Good Grips Peeler recently after somehow misplacing my other two peelers (how does that happen?). I’m actually glad I lost my other peelers, because this peeler puts all the others to shame. It glides through food so nicely, it almost feels like it is doing the peeling for you. Because I had such an easy time with this peeler, I felt confident trying it on a tougher job like the butternut, and it did not disappoint!

What Pan to Use?

To make the maple butter glazed squash and apples, you can use either a casserole dish or a 9 x 13 inch baking pan. Different materials can affect how quickly foods cook and get brown in the oven (glass, light metal, dark metal, etc.). So just keep an eye out on the squash in the last few minutes of cooking to make sure it doesn’t get too brown.

When choosing a dish, it’s most important to just pick one that’s big enough so the veggies aren’t piled up too high. As you can see from this picture, my veggies aren’t in a single layer but they aren’t mounded up either.

The pan I used here is the 3.6 Quart Cast Iron Casserole Pan from Lodge, in “Island Spice Red.” It’s great because it’s versatile – you can use it on the stove top or the oven. Although, I mostly just love it because it looks pretty! So pretty that there is no need to transfer food into a serving dish (saving on washing dishes too, woo hoo!).

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