Meatloaf Cupcakes by JoJo

Sometimes you have an idea that is just so amazing that you can't wait to get it going. That's how I feel about this recipe. Now I'm not saying I'm the only one who has done thing, or the only one who has ever come up with this idea, but let's just say that where I'm from, you can't get a meat cupcake! And after doing this all I can say is, *insert caveman voice* meat cupcake gooood.

 Ingredients Set One (Meatloaf Mixture):
2.5 pounds ground meat of choice. You can even mix up some meats. We picked turkey.
One package of bacon. (Again, we did turkey bacon)
3 cups of panko or bread crumbs
Two eggs
One large onion, chopped
2 cups of milk
Salt and Pepper to taste
2 tablespoons of brown sugar
2 tablespoons of dijon mustard
1/3 cup ketchup
4 tablespoons of steak seasoning
4 garlic cloves, minced
6 ounces of cheese of choice (We did a local provolone)

Ingredients Set Two (Barbeque Sauce):
1 cup ketchup
1 cup water
1/2 cup molasses
1/4 cup vinegar
1/4 cup dijoin mustard
2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
1 teaspoon of garlic powder
1/4 teaspoon of chili powder
1/4 teaspoon of hot sauce
1 tablespoon of steak seasoning
*Don't be a freaky deek and feel ashamed if you go get yourself a bottle of Famous Dave's or the like in place of creating your own sauce.  Not everybody is up to this, or may have the time.  Sauce sometimes is something that needs to be worked up to in the kithcen skill area.  Do what you feel comfortable with.

Ingredients Set Three (Potato Topping):
3/4 5lb bag of potatoes (3.75 pounds)
1 stick of butter
1/4 cup of milk
Salt and Pepper to taste

First we are going to start by making a BBQ sauce. The ingredients you are going to use are set two of ingredients. Just put all ingredients into a bowl and mix well. You are going to find that this is very... watery? Not really a thick texture. We're going to fix this by placing the BBQ sauce in a pan and letting it simmer on the stove. Make sure to keep your eye on this while working with the other things we're going to do. This should finish up in around 20-30 minutes. DO not boil - we don't want this burning.

 Now peel and cut your potatoes into small pieces. Boil in some salt water. You want to start the potatoes before the meatloaf because we want them at a simi cool state before we start the meat loaf. You'll see why later. Now, one the potatoes can easily be pierced with a fork, drain. Plop down a stick of butter with 1/4 cup of milk in with the drained potatoes and mash well. This is one of those times where you really don't want chunky mashed potatoes. We used a ricer first on just the potatoes, and then a masher with the milk and butter. Smooth, smooth, smooth. Once you get them nice and smooth salt and pepper to taste.

 Once the potatoes are mashed you are going to mix all the ingredients from set one. Yep, that's right! Once again we are just throwing everything together. Make sure to put them all into a decently sized bowl other wise the next part is going to be messier than it already is. Now, stick your hands in and mix everything together! You can try to do it other ways, but this will seriously work the best. Make sure to have a helper around if possible because you may find that you need more bread/panko crumbs. It's way easier to have them dumped them in for you if possible rather than having to wash your hands and add more yourself. Once you have it decently mixed together you can use a wooden spoon to mix it more if you feel the need.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. In two giant cupcake pans (6 cupcakes) take 12 strips of bacon and line the tins with it. You can choose to use two pieces of bacon if you want.

Once you have the bacon inserted, fill each hole up halfway with the meat loaf mixture. With your fingers burrow a little bowl into the meatloaf. Make sure you don't go too deep, we don't want to see the pan. Take 1/2 ounce of cheese (your choice) and put it in your little meat bowl. Cover with more meatloaf, making a decent sized cupcake. Once you have 12 healthy looking cupcakes made, put in your oven for 15 minutes.

Now, hopefully you have been watching your BBQ sauce during all of this - stirring often. It should be done around this time. We had ours cook down to about half it's size which gave it the consistency we wanted. Now you can just leave it in your pot if you want to use a spoon later to add to your cupcake, but we put it in a plastic condiment bottle.  You will have leftovers of the sauce.

After you take the BBQ sauce completely off the heat, you should still have some baking time left on your cupcakes o'meat. I spent this time putting my mashed potatoes in a piping bag for frosting cakes. You do NOT have to get this fancy by any means, but I honestly just thought it would be easier. I used one piping bag full per 6 cupcakes.  You can also use a Ziplock bag for this.  Fill the bag, squeeze excess air out, seal, and cut a corner off, voila!  Piping bag!

 

Now we should be close to our 15 minutes being up. Remove cupcakes from oven and frost them with your mashed potatoes. Once done put back into the oven for 15-20 minutes. I know that meatloaf normally takes an hour but remember, this isn't a big loaf. The cupcakes are smaller so they don't need to cook that long. If you are feeling skeptical, keep one cupcake unfrosted that you can cut into to see if the meat is done.

Once cupcakes are done put them onto a plate and drizzle the BBQ over them. Enough to fully cover the cupcake. And there you go! I found this to be easier than I thought it would be! Timing everything can get a little stressful, but the majority of it was just mixing a bunch of stuff together. We did have mashed potatoes left over and ended up eating them on the side. Enjoy carnivorously!

JoJo's Spaghetti Squash Boats

Hey Everyone! Sorry for the pause again! Mama Lanette and I are finding that this blog is more work than we expected! That's not a bad thing, but we need to work better at getting our two recipes a week in! But I'm happy to say that we're coming back with what I think is a really good recipe! Let's get to it!

Ingredients:
2 small spaghetti squash (Or one medium)
1 pound of meat of your choice. We picked some ground Italian pork because it was cheap. But feel free to do ground turkey or whatever you want.
1/2 cup of chopped onion
1/2 cup of chopped green pepper
1/2 cup of chopped mushrooms
3 garlic cloves, minced
1/2 teaspoon of dried basil
1/2 teaspoon of dried oregano
3 medium tomatoes, diced
1/2 cup of shredded mozzarella, or cheese of choice
Salt and Pepper to taste

First preheat your oven to 375 degrees. As your oven is preheating cut your spaghetti squash in half. Now if you have a medium one this can be a struggle. There's been a few times where I could be found sitting on the kitchen floor with my knife fully stuck in a spaghetti squash trying to bang it on the floor to get it all the way through. It gets easier though! But as I was saying, you're going to want to cut the squashes in half and then gut the seeds out of it. Like a cantaloupe! Once that is done you will place them gut side down on a cookie sheet and put them in the oven for 40-45 minutes.

While those are cooking, start browning your meat of choice. Don't worry about seasoning it this point, just brown it and drain it. As you're cooking that, take the time to dice up your onions, tomatoes, peppers, and mushrooms. Make sure to dice them small, but not small enough to be considered minced.







Once the ground meat is done, remove from the stove and drain all grease. We will then add all of the chopped veggies and seasonings. We will cook these on low until the onion is cooked fully and the flavors get a good mixture.

Depending on how long this takes, your squash should be done or close to done. Remove the squash from the oven and give it 5-10 minutes to cool. It will still be hot to the touch after this but not so much where you can't touch it when needed. Flip the squash over and, using a fork, scrape out the insides. Now make sure you leave some inside because we will be using the "shell" later on. Take about a cup out of each half if using two small ones, or two cups of each if using a big one.





Add the squash into the skillet with the meat mixture and mix well. Cook on a low heat for about 10 minutes, until all liquid has evaporated. Make sure to mix once about every two minutes.








As you are cooking the mixture, take time to shred the cheese. You might have bought preshredded too, but just so you do know, the way that they keep that cheese from clumping in that bag is they add wood pulp. Cleaner foods equals a better you!








Once you are done with the cheese and your meat mixture, take the four, or two, shells that you have and equally put the meat mixture in the squash shells. Bake these at 350 degrees for about 15 minutes. Once those are done add your cheese and bake for about another 5 minutes.






And there you go! Not only do you have an amazing dinner that tastes oh so good, but you are also eating something healthy! And this is something that you can play with and make healthier if you wanted.

And as an extra treat I have a second recipe for you. Now this is something that I literally dreamed up. I've really been thinking about rice bowls lately. Trying to figure out a way to make them with spaghetti squash. I don't really have pictures for step by step since I wasn't even making this for the blog, but after eating it and seeing how good it was I wanted to share. Not only did this get the thumbs up by BBB, but my picky eater friend Stephy Bee also nommed this down!

Ingredients:
Four cups of spaghetti squash
One cup of frozen peas
One cup of carrots chopped up
One cup of cabbage shredded
4 eggs
2 tablespoons of soy sauce
1 tablespoon of brown sugar
2 tablespoons of sesame oil
3 tablespoons of water

Bake spaghetti squash with the same instructions of above recipe. As squash is baking, heat up sesame oil and saute the veggies. Once squash is done, take a fork to it and get about four cups of "noodles" out. Mix veggies and squash into a decent size bowl. Take soy sauce, brown sugar, and water and mix together, and then pour into the squash and veggies and mix well. Set aside and fry up your four eggs. Split the squash mixture into four different bowls and lay one fried egg onto each bowl. EAT AWAY!!!