Meat Cupcakes

I wanted to make these meatloaf cupcakes, and I honestly don't remember how I thought of it or how I decided I wanted to do this. I think it had something to do with my cake obsession (that seems to have past). It's meatloaf in muffin pans with mashed potatoes on top to look like icing! Super cute, right?

It took two tries, because well, the first try was not good enough for the blog on it's own. I was embarrassed that my attempt had failed.

Take 1:

I loaded the meatloaf into the muffin pan. I loaded what seemed like a normal amount of meat, I thought. but cake rises in the oven and meat, sort of shrinks. My cupcakes turned out looking a lot more like hockey pucks. Chris said he likes hockey, so it's okay. I dunno about that.

I made the mashed potatoes as normal and they were a little lumpy for mypastry bag and the thing kept getting jammed. I was getting frustrated. There were a lot of breaks in the "icing" making it look, well, more like turds. What a horrible thing to admit about one's cooking but it's true.

Take 1 was actually very tasty despite the not so attractive appearan

ce. We used a bunch of spices and the Ezekiel 4:9 bread which gave the meatloaf a nice nutty flavor. Plus Chris loves meat of all kinds so it was a pretty simple decision to try again.

Take 2:

Learning from Take 1 we loaded up the muffin pan this time! See how the meat is overflowing from the pan. We got 6 "cupcakes" instead of 9.

As you can see here, they look much more cupcake like than the shrivels of meat pucks we had last time. I think they even resemble un-iced cupcakes! (at this point in take 2 I was getting excited that my plan was going to work)

Then we changed the way we made the potatoes too! I mashed them in the kitchen aid instead of by hand so they would be more mashed. The kitchen aid worked super great, I love that thing!

I also ditched the failed pastry bag, stupid thing! I went back to the old ziplock bag. It works so great as a piping bag and I can snip the opening as big or as small as I want, so whatever lumps the kitchen aid didn't take care of wouldn't stop the icing from flowing.

I think Take 2 was much more successful! Look how cute the little meatloaf cakes are! It even felt weird to eat a cupcake with a knife and fork! This time we actually used the Genesis 1:29 bread instead of the Ezekiel 4:9. The genesis one has seeds in it and I liked the texture of the seeds a lot!

I read something online that suggested using beets to dye the mashed potatoes pink, so it would look even more like cupcakes. How cute!

Maybe the next time the meat lover in your family has a birthday, a meatloaf cupcake is the way to go!