– Meatloaf Cupcakes?! Yes, Please! #pinterestchallenge

Julie at DutchBeingMe.com came up with a fantastic idea…a link-up called “52 Weeks of Pinterest Challenge”, where bloggers can do/cook/visit things they find on Pinterest.

Never heard of Pinterest?

Pinterest is kind of like a virtual bulletin board. You can “pin” things to different boards (I have categories like “Yummy Deliciousness” and “Craft Ideas”) that you find online or “repin” things you saw on other peoples’ boards. I think you still have to have an invitation to join, so if that’s the case and you’d like to check it out, leave me a comment and I’ll send you one. I will warn you, though…it is HIGHLY addictive!

Anyway, there are so many cool crafts I want to do, recipes I want to try, etc, that I thought Julie’s link-up would be a fabulous way to get them done. Here’s hoping I can keep up with it….there might be quite a few recipes at first, until I get this back to school routine down…

My first Pinteresting (that’s a word, right??) is something I saw on another fabulous Julie’s blog: Mama Mash posted a recipe for “Meatloaf Cupcakes With Mashed Potato Icing”. Our family LOVES meatloaf, and I thought the idea of individual servings (or “cupcakes”) would be fun and easy to try. Plus, since I’m on Weight Watchers now and have to be very careful about what I eat, I knew that I could alter my own meatloaves to be more WW-friendly. AND Julie M. REALLY likes bacon, so she wrapped her cupcakes with a strip of it. T. and the kids also REALLY love bacon, so I wanted to try it, too (on theirs, not mine).

This is what it looked like before I cooked them:

I *may* have forgotten to wrap them in bacon, so I sort of….rested it on top. My cupcakes are on the left. I made them out of ground turkey with oats, an egg white, a splash of milk and a squirt of honey mustard.

The others are our regular recipe:

1-1 1/2 lbs ground beef (I usually use the 80/20 “formula”)

1 cup of old-fashioned oats (I like using them instead of bread crumbs, because you don’t get the mushy spots)

1 egg

1/4 cup of milk

1/4 cup ketchup

Sauce:

1/4 mustard

1/4 cup honey or brown sugar

1/2 cup ketchup

I cooked them according to the directions. After about 35 minutes, I took them out and put sauce on top of the bacon ones and mashed potatoes on top of mine, then cooked them for about 10 more minutes.

Oh, and because my kids (and T.) can be pretty picky eaters, I left the mashed potatoes off of the cupcakes so they could eat them separately (or not at all). I do love the look of the “frosting” on top, though.

This is the After picture: