Mouthwatering Mini Meatloaves

I don’t know about you, but I think the best parts of a meatloaf are the edges.  So when I was considering making a meatloaf, I thought, why not make little ones so that there’s a much higher edge to middle ratio.  And well… why not wrap them in bacon?  Bacon is always a welcome addition. 

Here’s what you need:

1 lb. ground turkey breast
2-3 small onions (they have to be small)
½ of a red bell pepper
2-3 cloves of garlic
1 egg
12 strips of bacon
Salt and pepper

 

In my world, bacon isn’t cooked unless it’s crispy.  Nothing bugs me more than something wrapped in a soggy piece of bacon.  With that in mind, you’ll need to par-cook the bacon before doing anything else.  Lay the slices on a foil lined sheet pan.

Bake at 350° for about 10 minutes.  Or until it looks about like this.

Remove it to some paper towels to drain and cool.  Next, dice your onion and bell pepper and mince your garlic.  You’ll want the pieces to be pretty small. 

Now, pull out your meat.  Drop it into a mixing bowl with an egg. 

Mix them until the egg is fully incorporated. Hubby likes things spicy.  Since I don’t really, I compromised and put in about a teaspoon of hot sauce.  You can as much as you like… or none.  This is a good time to add the salt and pepper as well.   

Once that’s mixed in, go ahead and stir in the onion, bell pepper, and garlic. 

Now, this is where the importance of having small onions comes in.  If you can’t find any really small onions, you can just remove some layers to make them fit.  Place a thin slice, about ¼ inch, into the bottom of each muffin cup. 

Now comes the bacon.  Place one strip around the edge of each cup.  Mine was center cup, so it didn’t quite make a complete circle, but close enough.  Look at that, a perfect little cup for your meat. 

Fill each one and press it with wet fingers to smooth out the top. 

I had two extra strips of undercooked bacon, and I’m pretty sure it’s blasphemous to waste bacon, so I just cut them up and topped each cup with a little piece. 

Bake, uncovered, in a 350° oven for 45 minutes.  I placed my muffin tins on a sheet pan just to be safe.  When they’re done, they won’t really be brown, but the bacon on top will be cooked as well as the strips around the edges.

If you’re careful, you can flip the meatloaves over and serve them with the onions on top.  The onions are sweet and caramelized, and I think they look fabulous that way.  I plated them both ways so you could see the difference.  Aren’t they cute? 

I served mine with a slice of potato and zucchini pie, which was a fabulous accompaniment. 

What full size recipe would you like to see miniaturized? 

cookie d'oh!

It's round, pink, has a hole in the middle, and is covered with sprinkles.

Apparently to my coworkers, that means something dirty. And telling them it was Homer's doughnut didn't help.

A little while ago one of my coworkers offered to bring me some sprinkles that were taking up space in her cupboard.  I'm never one to turn down offers of ingredients, even sprinkles, so I accepted. I had no idea exactly how much space was being taken up by sprinkles. 

The next day I found one of those large "gallon" sized zip bags on my desk.

A large zip bag can hold a lot of sprinkles.

And since I was still kinda feeling like making other desserts into cookies, I decided to do doughnuts. Homer's doughnuts. Round, pink, with a hole in the middle, covered in sprinkles.

Also, it just so happens that "National Doughnut Day" just passed. Once again, we at Authors Kitchen are totally on top of all the important holidays.

Plain old sugar cookies are perfect for doing silly things to. (perv)

Sugar Cookies

What you need:

• 1 c butter
• 1 c sugar
• 2 tsp vanilla
• 2 eggs
• 2 tsp milk
• 3 c flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt

(this is a double batch which makes about 4 dozen cookies, and easily cut in half if you are looking to eat them all in one night)

What you gotta do:

In a large bowl, cream the room temperature butter with the sugar until it's all soft and fluffy. You'll start to lose the gritty feeling from the sugar if you do it long enough.

Add the eggs, vanilla, and milk.

Beat this again with your Popeye arms, or your fancy schmancy mixer that has its own speshul place on the counter, until it's shiney and kinda looks like cake frosting. (Really, it kinda is cake frosting).

Normally, I'd just dump the flour, baking powder and salt into the bowl and stir, but I had a minion with me, and so I employed him to sift the dry ingredients together in a small bowl.

I also had him crack the eggs into the creamed butter. No shells this time!

Add the sifted flour to the creamed butter and egg mixture in two batches.

After the second one, you'll have a soft, but not quite sticky dough. In order to handle it and roll it, you'll need to chill it a bit first.

Divide it in half, wrap it in plastic, and let is sit around in the fridge for at least half an hour. I don't like to leave dough in the fridge too long because it becomes too stiff to handle. It should be pliable, and not too cold to the touch.

Liberally flour your counter, your rolling pin, and the dough. At first, you're going to want to move it around and reflour everything regularly so it doesn't stick to the counter. If your dough is stuck to the counter, there will be no saving the shapes you cut, and you'll have to do it all over again.

Roll the dough to just under a quarter inch thick.

If you don't have cookie cutters, a wine glass works nicely to make round cookies.

I'd finally found a doughnut cutter so I cut doughnuts and holes. Either save up and reroll the holes to make more doughnuts, or bake them all separately so they don't get overdone.

You want the cookies to lose their gloss, and be just barely golden on the bottom.

7-8 minutes at 350 will do that. I know you already preheated your oven. You're smart like that. Just like me.

"I am so smart. S-M-R-T."

To make the pink glaze you need:

• Icing (powdered) sugar
• Milk
• Red Dye
• Some kind of flavourant (vanilla is best, but I'd managed to run out, so I used peppermint)

One of these days I'll actually measure how much icing sugar and milk I use to do this kind of thing. Really, just dump a bunch of sugar in a bowl. Add milk a tiny splash at a time, a few drops of flavourant, and keep stirring until you have something the consistency of really thick laundry detergent.

It should blob off the end of a spoon at first, but then turn into something ribbon like.

Two bloody drops was all I needed

to make Pepto-Bismol Pink!

Lay the cookies out on parchment paper as close together as you can. Dribble and blob the glaze all over the cookies. Then add sprinkles by the handful.

If you don't have a gallon of sprinkles, you might want to work on accuracy in your application. It also might help your cookies not look like they were made by a five year old.

I'm okay with my cookies looking like they were made by a five year old.

Let these set on the counter for about 20 minutes. The glaze will harden just enough that it holds onto the sprinkles and looks solid, but it will still be soft and gooey when you bite it.

 Did you know there was a National Doughnut Day??