Week 33 - Food in Disguise

The theme for the Week 33 challenge was food in disguise. They had the same theme back in 2016 when I attempted a (slice of a) meatloaf layer cake, so I wasn't sure what I would make this time, if anything. Some people are really creative when it comes to this type of challenge, but I often come up blank since my creative side has sadly kind of dried up over the years. In the end, I decided to make the same thing again but in cupcake form, which I had considered that time but hadn't done. We hadn't had meatloaf in so long, so this seemed like a good time. Not really a new recipe for the challenge, but it was completely new to B who had never had meatloaf before.

I know I did the breakdown for cost when I originally made this meatloaf for the historical foods challenge in 2014, but I'm curious to see how it has changed over the past six years. The ingredients for these meatloaf cupcakes (slightly changed because we had no Italian bread crumbs and can't currently cook with eggs) were:

- 1 tbsp olive oil ($0.10)

- 1 onion, chopped ($0.63)

- 5 garlic cloves, minced ($0.15)

- 8 oz cremini mushrooms, chopped ($2.79)

- salt and freshly ground black pepper ($0.03)

- 7 tbsp ketchup ($0.28)

- 1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce ($0.25)

- 2/3 cup panko bread crumbs ($0.27)

- garlic powder ($0.03)

- oregano ($0.05)

- basil ($0.05)

- just under 1/3 cup milk ($0.10)

- 2 flax eggs ($0.16)

- 1-1/3 lb ground turkey ($4)

The total for the meatloaf portion was $8.89, the mashed potato "frosting" added another $1 (guessing - can't find the receipt), and I made carrots on the side for another $2 or so, bringing the grand total to $11.89. Not much more than it was back in 2014, which was pretty surprising to me. The mashed potatoes were just from the frozen aisle at Trader Joe's, since I figured (correctly) that the meatloaf was going to take up the majority of my time and attention.

The steps for making the meatloaf cupcakes were fairly similar to when we made it as a meatloaf and a meatloaf cake. They were:

1. Prep - chop onion, garlic, mushrooms. Make flax eggs. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

2. Heat olive oil over medium heat. Add onions and cook until softened, then add garlic and cook another minute or so, and then add mushrooms, some salt and pepper, continuing to cook until there is no more liquid left in the pan.

3. Remove the onions and mushrooms from heat, and move to a large bowl to cool off, combining them with 3 tbsp ketchup and 1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce.

4. In a medium bowl, combine the panko bread crumbs with the garlic powder, oregano, basil, and milk. Mix well. [This was Italian bread crumbs in the original recipe, but we didn't have any, so I combined panko with some Italian seasonings. It was also supposed to be a cup, but we only had about 2/3 cup left, so I just added slightly less milk. The meatloaf seemed fine with less bread crumbs to bind it, but I would have used more if we had more.]

5. Add the flax eggs and bread crumb mixture to the onions and mushrooms along with a little more salt and pepper. Stir well to combine.

6. Add the ground turkey to the large bowl and mix.

7. Grease a muffin pan, and add turkey mixture to each cup as evenly as possible. [It was a perfect fit for 12 muffins/cupcakes!]

8. Brush each cup with the remaining ketchup so that the entire top of each muffin is coated with ketchup.

9. Bake for about 40 minutes or until internal temperature reaches 170 degrees. [We baked it for 40 minutes, and it was about 200 degrees when we pulled them out. They were fine.]

10. Make mashed potatoes. [Ours were 5 minutes in the microwave, so that worked here, but if you're making mashed potatoes from scratch, would probably need to start earlier! We also used the baking time to make our side dish of carrots.]

11. Place meatloaf on a platter, and spread the mashed potatoes on top like frosting. [You could pipe it on, but it was really late. Didn't have time to consider doing that, and I'm not very good at frosting.]

We really liked the meatloaf cupcakes, but we like meatloaf and they were basically just meatloaf and mashed potatoes. The meatloaf was just as good in muffin form as it has been in loaf form, so we were happy about that. As usual, we finished all the meatloaf in one night, and it was mostly the two of us, since B was sort of lukewarm about the whole dinner. It was funny, because a lot of people had been interpreting the food in disguise theme as a way to hide vegetables in other foods so their kids/other family members would eat it, but B was the opposite and would have been more interested in the vegetables themselves. I even had to point out the mushroom pieces to get him to consider eating more of it. Maybe he'll like it better next time if I don't chop the mushrooms so small. We still love this meatloaf recipe, so we should probably make it more often!