Man Cakes

First of all, I want to thank Fast Paleo for inspiring this idea and igniting my inner evil. At church, our ladies group (known as Relief Society to those of you who are not from Utah or Mormon) had a fun meet and treat social right around Halloween. I signed up to bring some cupcakes, thinking I'd show off my pumpkin chocolate chip cookies or some gluten free commodity. I wanted to dazzle somehow. Then Fast Paleo posted their meat cupcake recipe. Suddenly, my inner Nefarious Scientist went "Liiiiight-buuuulb!"

(Pretend the girls are Fast Paleo & the device is meat cupcakes. I'm, obviously, evil genius Gru)

The quest was on. I knew I could one-up the recipe by unleashing my inner Primal baker. Plus, it's Halloween, baby! Nobody ever does tricks anymore. Trick or treat? I choose trick!

What you'll need:

1 lb ground beef (don't bother using grass fed, cuz you might piss off you friends and they'll throw it away when they bite into your cupcake-lined evil genius)
frozen cauliflower
1 egg
1/4c sour cream
garlic powder
black pepper
marjoram
sage
oregano
basil
parmesan
rosemary
tomato paste
food gel
edible glitter (definitely NOT Primal, but we're pulling out all the stops here. You could easily dye some sea salt for a similar effect)
festive cupcake liners (I chose pirates for 5 obvious reasons!)
muffin tin

Preheat oven 350F
Place ground beef, herbs, egg, and parmesan into bowl and mix well.

Really get in there! Use your hands. They're not called meat hooks for nothin' ya know!

(By the way, don't ever let anyone tell you that you need some sort of bread crumb to hold meatloaf together. If you put enough dry herbs and spices in, it stays together JUST FINE!)

Line muffin pan with cupcake liners

Form into meatballs and drop into cupcake liners. You can pat them down when they're all evenly divided.

Place in oven. Bake 30 mins.

When they are done, I encourage you to remove the cupcakes and drain them off. You & I may like liquid critter pudge, but your fat-phobic friends may not. Do them a favor, make them slightly less pissy, and drain your man cakes!
Plus it's not grass fed, so you really should drain off all that golden not-so-good-ness ;)

(Honestly, I just switched my cakes into new liners)

Allow cupcakes to cool. You don't want your "icing" sliding off!

Meanwhile, steam cauliflower until tender. Drain well. Place in food processor. Follow my recipe for Smashed Cauliflower, reducing sour cream down to 1/4 cup. You can add more later if necessary, but the smashed cauliflower needs to be pretty stiff to look like buttercream frosting!

Separate smashed cauliflower into at least 2 batches. To one batch, add the food gel dye and mix until very well blended, reaching desired color.

Do the same for the other batches. I chose red and white for this. Place into ziploc sandwich bags and seal. Clip end off to form piping bag.

To gallon-size ziploc, cut small hole in corner and squeeze through a piping tip until snug.

Place separate colored bags into gallon ziploc, feeding the snipped tips into the piping tip.
Alternatively, you may also use a piping bag if you have one. Just keep your bag on its side, spoon in a color, rotate, spoon in another color, etc.

Waste-pipe a couple of inches on to a paper towel or plate until you get an even distribution of colors.

(mmm... looks like intestine... or pepto bismal...)

Just prior to piping, take some tomato paste and place on top of your Man Cakes

Pipe on to your cooled cupcakes.

Sprinkle with your edible glitter.

Serve. Sit back and smirk. Have fun watching your friends' reactions!

I've toyed with the idea of being an evil genius for Halloween, but, c'mon. How original would that be? I am an evil genius EVERY. DAY.