Stuck For Valentine's Day? Try Meat Cupcakes

"What about Meat Cupcakes?"

"The what now?  Are you making reference to that insipid Michael Jackson song from the Grammys?"

"No, no - I just had a vision of meat cupcakes and thought you'd like to make them for your column."

I'd been wondering about what I should do for this week's Meatist for days, running through what I've written about and what I haven't, and decided to ask my wife, Joanna, what she thought. In three seconds flat, she comes up with meat cupcakes. And now

she was standing across the room grinning her ass off, looking like

Johnny Depp had just wandered into the room and asked her to dance.

"You

could do them with whipped potatoes, and sprinkles made out of bacon or

peppers, you know, stuff like that," she said dreamily.

So it's

two weeks in a row she proves I'm no idiot (at least as far as chick

selection goes), first with her cheese variation on the Bacon

Explosion, and now with meat-fucking-cupcakes, something I doubt I

would have ever thought of on my own. I'm always up for meat

experiments though, and with Valentine's Day just around the corner,

the timing couldn't be better; chocolates and roses can't hold a candle

to a platter of meat presented in cupcake form.

I decided to go

with a standard meatloaf recipe: a pound of lean ground beef (I

normally advocate the fattiest cuts for this sort of thing, but the

grease/cupcake pan thing could get gnarly), a pound of ground pork,

some ground veal. Fresh onions softened in a buttery frying pan, some

egg, some ketchup.

"What are you going to cook 'em in, metal or silicone?"

"Both. Gotta hedge my bets here."

I

started to fill the muffin pans, packing the meat mixture in tightly,

but allowing it to overflow each cup. Meat shrinks when it cooks, which

meant I didn't have to worry about them growing together into some sort

of nine-footed mega-meat-cupcake. They'd also be easy to remove, so

foil wrappers were unnecessary.

I decided that I'd also make

some meat muffins while I was at it, which meant I'd have to glaze them

with something to make them extra attractive.

"Dude, get me some ketchup and a pastry brush, would you? My hands are meaty."

Joanna

brought it over, and I did a quick brush of ketchup over each muffin,

leaving the cupcake-destined meat pies alone. Into a 350-degree oven,

checked with a meat thermometer at 30 minutes, and they were done.

First thing I notice, metal or silicone makes no damn difference at

all. Every cupcake was easy to remove, and they all needed to be pulled

from the time immediately to keep them from sitting in their own

grease. I let them cool on a plate while I made some instant mashed

potatoes.

Yes, instant; I'm the Meatist, not the Root

Vegetablist, and I have no particular need to honor the potato. Plus, I

was in a hurry. In retrospect though, a fresh, whipped potato mixture

with smashed garlic would have been the bees knees.

After the

potatoes cooled sufficiently to thicken and fill a pastry bag without

burning my hands, it was time to try and pipe them onto the cupcakes.

Which I sucked at. But then, I'm a spaz like that, and Joanna makes

handmade artisan soaps.

"Jo, would you come pipe my potatoes please?"

She looked up from the work she was doing with our son, Desmond.

"You charmer. Did that line work at the bars too?"



After

the potatoes were applied, it was simply a matter of chopping some

Poblano chiles up for sprinkles and adding some crushed red pepper for

color and heat. The end result looked awesome, tasted great, and, if

you're dating the right person, is bound to get you laid this

Valentine's Day.