Mini Turkey Meatloaf "Cupcakes"

This is one of my favorite recipes as it is very versatile! I take a meat loaf mix of ground TURKEY, onion, celery, bread crumbs, an egg, garlic, and a little bit of barbeque sauce. This obviously can be made with any type of ground meat with any ingredients (which is why I love it so much). I then take the mixture and place them in a cupcake tin to make mini meatloaf “cupcakes”. The quick time is much faster, and I love the outside edge of meatloaf that gets crispy, so this makes it happen for each little meatloaf.  While they are baking (about 350 degrees for 30 minutes), I steamed 2 sweet potatoes in the microwave, once soft, I took the potato out of the skin and mashed them up with our yogurt butter blend, aka fake butter, aka healthy. I add a touch of salt and a nutmeg and clove mix (just a dash). These flavors work really well with the turkey.  Instead of sweet potatoes, you can always use regular potatoes (but sweet potatoes are much more nutritious). Instead of potatoes altogether, a pureed vegetable could be used or mashed cauliflower.  Once the mini turkey meatloaves are finished cooking, I take them out of a pan and let them cool, and they look like this:

I then take the mashed sweet potato and add it on top of the turkey meatloaf as if it was the icing on the cupcake! This recipe is incredibly fun for kids as playing with food is allowed because they can create their own mini meatloaf cupcake. This is especially great if there are different types of “icings” and “sprinkles”. For these meatloaf cupcakes, I added chive “green sprinkles” and on some and a swirl of barbeque sauce. Other toppings could be anything you load in a baked potato. With sweet potato it is good to add chopped dried cranberries, and for regular potatoes, shredded cheese, bacon, tomato, etc. It is a great way to sneak in food to kids because they see it as a sprinkle rather than an ingredient.  The final result looks like this:

To bring them to a party or serve them for dinner, they look great in a dish all together! Although there are no kids in this newlywed kitchen… yet, it is still fun to eat a dish like this.