Cupfakes take the cake for the good taste

Meet the legendary cupcake's daring and bold sister: the cupfake. The cupfake is your answer to your savory, yet, satisfying needs. A cupfake resembles a cupcake in appearance, but the tastes are quite different.

While cupcake flavors are mostly vanilla, chocolate or fruit, a cupfake can have a base of a meatloaf, cheddar chive and onion biscuit, or, virtually, any biscuit recipe. The most common cupfake recipe is a meatloaf bottom with a mashed potato frosting on top. You can trick your friends with these delicious, bite-sized mini-meatloaves at a dinner party or just for fun.

To make the mini-meatloaf cupcakes, you will need a cupcake pan. For the meatloaf base, you can use either ground beef or turkey in your recipe. Call up your mom, grandmother or best friend for a great recipe. There are also tons of fabulous meatloaf recipes on foodnetwork.com.

Spray your cupcake pan with spray-butter, or line the entire pan with aluminum foil for a mess-free cleanup. Fill each cupfake 3?4 full of your meatloaf mixture; place a slice of Velveeta cheese on top of that, and another layer of meatloaf on top. Only fill the center of the cupcake pan with your cupfake recipe-the outer cupcake shells will need to be filled halfway with water for baking. Set your oven to 350 degrees and bake the meatloaves for 15-20 minutes, or until completely cooked.

While these are cooling it's time to whip up the mashed potato frosting. Make your usual mashed potatoes and pour them into a Ziploc baggie. Let the frosting cool off before piping it onto the tops of the meatloaf cupfakes. Place a tomato cherry on top of each one and serve to your friends for dinner, or dessert!

Cupfakes, just like cupcakes, have endless recipes, combinations and flavors to choose from; it's all just a matter of creativity and a bit of imagination.

For another delightful and appetizing cupfake recipe, try making the cheddar chive and bacon cupfakes with avocado frosting. The complete recipe can be found on http://willowbirdbaking.