Recipe: Turkey Meatloaf “Cupcakes” with Mashed Potato “Frosting”

As the holiday break came to a close, I found myself wanting to hang on to some of the comforts of being holed up in the house, sacked out on the coach in my sweatpants for long periods of time, with little to plan or worry about. I wanted comfort, and on Monday night that came in the form of food.

These guys came about really by accident. The original meatloaf (side note: I despise that word) recipe called for them in mini loaf pans, but, since I didn’t have any of those on hand, I decided to go with my XL muffin tin. What the hey, I was feeling creative.

Along with the meatloaf I made mashed potatoes, and while the potatoes were cooking I thought it would be cute to make these into cupcakes!

Unfortunately Boyfriend quickly put the kibosh on my excitement by bluntly telling me he did NOT want mashed potatoes ON TOP OF his meatcake (better? No.), but they were a big hit on Facebook!

By the way, these are relatively healthy, so this is guilt-free comfort food!

I only have this one crappy picture because SOMEONE didn't think these were a very good idea...

Turkey Meatloaf “Cupcakes” with Mashed Potato “Frosting”
Adapted from recipes here and here.
Makes 6 large “cupcakes”

For the meatloaf:

1 small onion, diced
2 tsp olive oil
2 pounds ground turkey breast
1 cup oatmeal
1/2 cup ketchup + 4 Tbsp
4 tsp Worcestershire sauce
2 large eggs
2 tsp dried marjoram
salt

For the potatoes:

6-7 medium potatoes, cubed (I used redskins and didn’t bother peeling them)
3/4 cup + 2 tbsp low fat buttermilk
2 tbsp butter
salt to taste
dash of fresh ground pepper
1/4 cup fresh chives

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees
2. Heat oil over medium-high heat, add onion and saute until translucent
3. In a large bowl combine turkey, onion, oatmeal, egg, ketchup, salt and marjoram
4. Grease an extra large muffin tin and divide the meat mixture into the 6 cups
5. In a small bowl combine remaining 4 Tbsp ketchup and Worcestershire sauce and brush onto each loaf
6. Bake for about 40 minutes; let rest for 5 minutes before serving
7. While the meatloaf is baking, put potatoes in a large pot with salt and enough water to cover
8. Bring to a boil, then cover and reduce heat
9. Simmer for 20 minutes or until potatoes are tender
10. Drain and return potatoes to the pot
11. Add buttermilk, light butter and remaining ingredients and mash until smooth; season with salt and pepper to taste
12. Get creative fashioning your potatoes on top of your meatloaf. Maybe even use some peas as “sprinkles”. Really go crazy with this.

Cheers!

Recipe: Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Cupcakes

I’m in the process of looking for a new job. Not a new career, just a step up from the entry-level position that I have grown out of over the last 3 years. It’s an amicable, wholly-supported search that I am completely open and honest about (which is kind of weird, the more I think about it) and my boss and my boss’s boss are encouraging and helpful. Unfortunately, everything at this place moves at a glacial pace, and I likely won’t find what I am looking for, for at least another couple months (for instance, a job that I was told about two weeks ago still isn’t posted on the job website, and thus I am unable to even apply).

One thing I already know I am going to miss about my current job is the students. Yes, I work at a university and there will always be students (if there weren’t we’d have some big problems), but I work in fundraising, which at this point is primarily geared toward alumni. And not talking about any one of the 40,000+ kids on this campus — I’m talking about the great group of students we have working for us here, that are already so passionate about fundraising, and are truly amazing kids. They are like the 16 little brothers and sisters I never had, and when they graduate and move on, I am always a little sad, but always so happy to hear they have acquired their first “big boy/girl” job.

A couple weeks ago the entire fundraising staff, nearly 300 people, gathered for a monthly meeting, during which we honored some of the top student fundraisers in my department. Not only did each student get recognized for raising over $100,000 (each!) for the school, they got a standing ovation from the community. It made my heart swell and brought tears to my eyes. Standing ovations are not used lightly around these parts, and are normally reserved for really important, exciting people (not that my students aren’t important and exciting, but I’m talking about, like, the football coach, who appeared the month before and the applause wasn’t even as loud…).

Anyway, besides the fact that I am a total emotional wreck most of the time, I also like to funnel these emotions into edible forms of appreciation. So the next day, I brought in cookie dough cupcakes for all of our students.

The cake is a light brown-sugar-flavored base, speckled with chocolate chips, with a brown-sugar frosting and a mini-chocolate chip cookie on top. A special surprise, egg-less cookie dough, is placed inside hollowed cupcakes before frosting.

I love making pretty deserts, and I get very distressed if a baking project doesn’t come out like I had planned in my head (some will remember the near-breakdown following the unsuccessful two-toned frosting incident the night before Opening Day). These ones turned out pretty good, but I can always count on my students to appreciatively oooh and ahhh over anything I bring in (plus, let’s face it – they’re college kids and they’d take free food if it was served on a scrap of old newspaper).

I didn’t make any changes to the recipe, so it isn’t posted on this page, but can be found over at Annie’s Eats. Maybe you have someone you are super proud of that you could make these for.

Cheers!

Recipe: Peanut Butter Cup Cupcakes

If you haven’t noticed, I am a little obsessed with cupcakes right now. Cupcake bakery visits, cupcake iPhone wallpaper, cupcake jewelry shopping… Unfortunately my taste buds are not agreeing with this obsession and, per the usual, are requesting salty over sweet. Ever since we polished off the last of the peanut butter brownie bites, I have been craving more chocolate-peanut butter combos. And so, behold: the latest craveable.

I didn’t bother to mess around with this recipe, I just wanted to share how great these turned out, despite my frosting being a bit soft (but still delicious). I brought these in for a weekly meeting with our student managers at work, and they all went bonkers. I love when my baking is appreciated!

Anyway, you can find the original recipe here. I found these great little Reese’s Minis to stick on top, to give them a little something extra. Too cute.

Review: Just Baked – Canton, MI

A quick post this morning, and hopefully one later on, depending on how much work I choose to get done today…

Just Baked – Canton, MI

 

Yesterday, Boyfriend joined a gym. Like so many Americans, on the eve of December 31, boyfriend resolved to be more active and lose weight this year. So, after dinner last night, we drove over to Lifetime Fitness to sign him up. Right before we turned on Haggerty, I made the decision to give him one last night of caloric freedom. Making a hard right into a nearly empty parking lot, we looked up to gaze at the beautifully lit pink cupcake sign, giddy (well, I was at least) at the thought of an imminent sugar bender.

Just Baked is a Michigan chain of bakeries with a newly opened storefront on Ford Road across from IKEA. Other locations include Livonia, Royal Oak, Novi and Ann Arbor, but I’m pretty sure the Canton location is the most recent (and not even on their main website yet). They are known for their slightly oversized cupcakes in tempting flavors such as White Chocolate Raspberry, Somoa, Grasshopper, S’More and Tiramisu, just to name five of the 50 cupcakes they have listed on their website.

 

When we walked in, I knew I had made a mistake. I had been wanting to stop into Just Baked since it opened only a week ago. I had heard tales of cupcake combinations that you would never dream of, all deliciously topped with perfectly piped frosting. But what we saw on this night was row after row of empty trays behind the glass. Barely a dozen cupcakes remained in their least popular flavors of the day. Boyfriend asked the teenager behind the counter, “I take it the empty trays mean you are sold out of all of those flavors?” The girl gave him a bored look and replied, “We were really busy today.”

After some consideration (very little, however, because there weren’t a lot of options to consider) I decided on the Red Velvet cupcake with cream cheese frosting. Boyfriend picked the Carrot Cake, which also had a cream cheese frosting. The cupcakes were $2.95 a piece, which we paid and stole away to the car to escape the forlorn cupcake trays, empty of both cupcakes and my hope of the perfect “last desert” for Boyfriend.

Red Velvet

Ok, so maybe I’m being a little dramatic. The cupcakes were not bad, by any means, but I just know I didn’t get the full effect by eating a cupcake that I felt I could have made (better) myself. The Red Velvet, which, I have to admit and Boyfriend called me out on, I had never had anywhere and wasn’t exactly sure what it was supposed to taste like, was simply a red-colored vanilla cake. The frosting was nothing exceptional. Boyfriend’s cupcake was better, light and airy as opposed to some carrot cakes that are heavy with oil. And we both agreed that we hadn’t dared to look at the plaques on the empty trays, not wanting to know what we were missing.

I kind of broke that vow today, after looking at the Just Baked website, and lucky for them, I will be returning to try at least a couple more flavors before I will completely write them off as a “I-can-do-better-myself” establishment, because I do believe I did not experience all that Just Baked had to offer. But it is still surprising that this cupcake-exclusive bakery, a place that only serves one thing, could run out of so much of their product over the course of the day. I get that they want their cupcakes to be fresh, but how about taking inventory halfway through the day and gearing up for the after-dinner, pre-gym rush? What about keeping an emergency stash in the back? Cupcakes are freezable, people; I’m sure most of you wouldn’t know the difference.

Carrot Cake

For now, I’m giving Just Baked two and half pickles, but I know I did not get the full Just Baked experienced (I did not “get baked,” if you will), and I hope to provide an update at a later date. Additional pickle points were lost on the unfriendly and unhelpful counter staff, as well as the “I-could-do-this-in-my-own-kitchen” quality of the desert. I will be going back, but I now know to plan my visit for early in the day, when the cupcake choices are plentiful, and hopefully the counter staff aren’t so burnt (ha! …no?) out.

Recipe: Chocolate and Cream Cheese (AKA “Black Bottom”) Cupcakes

For my first recipe post, I wanted to start out with a bang. What better way to incite said bang than with sharing a family secret of a family that is currently only mine in theory?

Boyfriend (for whom I am still trying to determine a clever pseudonym) and I have been dating for 5 years. We live together, our finances are meshed, we have a dog. For the entirety of our relationship I have heard about these secret cupcakes that no one makes better than his mother. It’s not some Oedipus thing, it’s just that she is the best at making these particular cupcakes (and is also to blame for his love of peanut butter on nearly everything). During our courtship, this cupcake lore has turned into a story of intense toiling over a hot stove (which would explain why these particular cupcakes are only produced on very special occasions) and a secret family recipe that only exists on a single sheet of scrap paper wedged into the back of a cabinet.

On this past Christmas morning, I was awarded the coveted opportunity not only to see the recipe for myself, but to quickly jot down the secret ingredients. And yes, the recipe was on a tiny slip of paper, and was really only a shopping list of ingredients with an oven temp and cook time.

Lucky for you, dear reader(s, I hope!), I am now able to present to you a fully reconstructed recipe for these amazing and secret cupcakes. Shh, don’t tell anyone or I might get disowned from the family before I even get in. I also am referring to them as “chocolate and cream cheese cupcakes” because I honestly can’t stand the word “bottom”. It is just one of those no-no words for me. Especially in food. No bottoms in my food, please.

Chocolate and Cream Cheese (AKA “Black Bottom”) Cupcakes
Makes 12 cupcakes

For cupcakes:
1 ½ c flour
1 c sugar
¼ c cocoa powder
½ tsp baking soda
½ tsp salt
1/3 c oil
1 c water
1 tsp vinegar
1 tsp vanilla extract

For filling:
8 oz cream cheese, room temperature (I used Neufchatel cheese)
1 egg
1/3 c sugar
1/8 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 c mini chocolate chips

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees
2. In a medium bowl, mix flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking soda and salt
3. In a separate bowl, mix oil, water vinegar and vanilla extract
4. Gradually blend the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients
5. Line a standard cupcake tin with liners and distribute batter, filling about half full
6. To make filling, beat together the cream cheese and egg
7. Mix the sugar and salt, and gradually add into the cream cheese mixture
8. Add vanilla extract
9. Fold in chocolate chips
10. With a tablespoon or piping bag*, distribute 1-2 tablespoons of the filling over the tops of the cupcakes so each liner is a little more than ¾ full
11. Bake for 20-25 minutes

[* I am a disaster in the kitchen, and have found that piping not only the filling but the chocolate cake part of this recipe generates much less waste and burnt on grossness on the cupcake tin. It also makes for a more artistic finished product.]

Logan can attest to the epic messes I make in the kitchen while I cook. Here, he is the innocent bystander of a cocoa powder explosion.