NASCAR Cupcakes - Salt and Vinegar Pork Rind Cupcakes with a Beer Glaze

This NASCAR cupcake is for Nanette Biddle Taylor who posted the following on the Cupcake Project Facebook Page last week:

Might I suggest some type of NASCAR-themed cupcake in honor of the start of the racing season at Daytona in less than 10 days??? I'm having withdrawals and can't wait for Daytona.

After seeing Nanette's request, I polled the Cupcake Project Facebook Community to see what types of food you thought best represented NASCAR.  Beer was the clear winner!  I've been around that track before.  If you want a beer cupcake, check out my beer cheese cupcakes, Hefeweizen (wheat beer) cupcakes, or my cupcakes with a built-in cup for beer.  Another popular food on the list was hot dogs; if you want to make a hot dog cupcake for NASCAR, I've got a recipe for that as well.  So, I was forced to race toward another popular suggestion - pork rinds!

Gumbo Mardi Gras Cupcakes Now Exist

I was alone in the kitchen when these gumbo Mardi Gras cupcakes came out of the oven.  Although I had loaded them with big chunks of smoked andouille sausage and prepared them using a roux (the traditional method for making gumbo), I wasn't sure what to expect.  Like you, I'd never tried a gumbo cupcake.  Would the cupcake taste vaguely spicy, or perhaps like a cupcake version of pigs in the blanket?

What I tasted as I popped a warm gumbo cupcake bite into my mouth blew my mind.  I tasted gumbo!  "These cupcakes actually taste like gumbo!"  I exclaimed aloud to no one but the masked ghosts of Mardi Gras past, present, and future who were giving me quizzical sidelong glances.

I served up these Mardi Gras gumbo cupcakes to several friends (trying to contain my excitement, lest they think me bonkers for proclaiming that the taste was so similar to the Cajun classic). To my relief and joy, they all agreed with me! One of my friends even went so far as to say that my cupcakes tasted like the gumbo made by one of the best chefs in town - huge happy dance time!

Are these gumbo cupcakes wacky? Oh, yeah!  Are they worth making for Mardi Gras?  You betcha!  Laissez les bons temps rouler!

Everything You Need to Know About Mardi Gras Gumbo Cupcakes

Start The New Year Right with Hoppin' John Served Over Cornmeal Pancakes

Hoppin' John is a Southern dish traditionally served on New Year's Day.  It's made with black-eyed peas, onions, and bacon (sometimes ham or sausage) and typically served over rice with a side of greens and corn bread.  The black-eyed peas in Hoppin' John are supposed to make us think of coins (I've never seen a coin that looks remotely like a black-eyed pea, but I'll go with it), and are supposed to bring a prosperous new year.  The greens are said to add wealth, since they are the color of money (that makes sense) and the cornbread continues the theme appropriately by being the color of gold.

Potato and Egg Cupcakes

I recently received a review copy of the book Muffin Tin Chef by Matt Kadey.  If I wrote the book, I would have called it Cupcake Tin Chef.  Other than that, I wouldn't have changed a thing.  The book is filled with ideas (and when I say filled, I mean that there are 101 ideas there) for sweet and savory dishes to make in cute single-serving sizes.  I've loved Matt's blog, Muffin Tin Mania, for years, and the book is now a valued addition to my collection.

This week, I'm going to feature two recipes that I've made inspired by Muffin Tin Chef (I've also got a book giveaway coming soon!).  Matt wrote an entire chapter just on brunch muffin tin recipes.  Since brunch is my favorite meal (seriously, does it get any better than brunch?), I focused my energies there.

Matt's Parmesan hash browns caught my eye right away - you can't go wrong with carbs and cheese!  But, since Matt is talking muffins and I'm talking cupcakes, I knew mine were going to need some frosting.  I took his Parmesan hash brown muffins an extra step and topped them with deviled egg frosting (a sweet twist on deviled eggs).  With Mother's Day coming soon, these potato and egg cupcakes might be just the thing to start Mom's morning off right.

Potato and Egg Cupcake Recipe

Lasagna Cupcakes Two Ways

Years ago, my brother requested that I create lasagna cupcakes.  This was before anyone had ever heard of lasagna cupcakes; a Google search for lasagna cupcakes today will reveal that lasagna cupcakes have been created many times by all manner of food bloggers and chefs.  Sadly, I didn't jump on my brother's idea - I hadn't yet embraced the world of savory cupcakes.  Now, I regularly make savory cupcakes (see my mac and cheese cupcakes for a recent example), but I still put off making lasagna cupcakes because I tend to avoid making something everyone else is doing - this is supposed to be an experimental cupcake blog.

This week, my mom came to visit from New York and wanted to prepare her family-famous lasagna.  I decided that this was the time to try lasagna cupcakes.  She was already buying all of the ingredients and doing all of the labor, so all I had to do was ask her to save a few scraps for me to cupcakify.  It was an all-around win:

• For my mom - she is so excited to see her lasagna recipe have a moment of glory on the blog
• For my brother - he finally gets his request fulfilled
• For me - I instantly fell in love with these single-serving lasagna cupcakes
• For you - maybe you have seen and put off making lasagna cupcakes OR maybe this is the first time you are hearing of them - this is your chance to try them!  

I made lasagna cupcakes two ways.

Baked Couscous Poppers

These baked couscous poppers are brown and crispy on the outside, but become an exciting avalanche of tiny couscous balls in your mouth. The couscous poppers are simple to make (just bake cooked couscous mixed with eggs, breadcrumbs, cheese, and spices). You can vary the cheeses, spices, and accoutrements to suit the occasion:

1. After-school snack: Mozzarella cheese, basil, garlic, and a tomato or ketchup dipping sauce
2. While watching the game: Cheddar cheese, chili powder, and a mustard dipping sauce
3. Dinner party: Smoked gouda, sea salt, chives, and barbecue sauce
4. Whatever you dream up!

How to Make Baked Couscous Poppers

Buffalo Chicken Cupcakes for the Super Bowl

After hearing that I was going to bake buffalo chicken cupcakes for the Super Bowl (with hot sauce and blue cheese in the cake and a blue cheese buttercream frosting), one of my friends asked if I would be baking the cupcakes as as a joke.  "Are they just supposed to be funny, or will you actually enjoy eating buffalo chicken cupcakes?"  Having not yet baked the Super Bowl buffalo chicken cupcakes, I told them that I was baking them mostly for the fun of it.  I didn't expect them to be particularly good.

When my house started to smell like buffalo wings (there was no chicken involved at this point), I knew I had the flavor right.  When I took a lick of my cupcake batter-laden finger, I began to suspect that I was going to like the buffalo chicken cupcakes.  When I tasted the cupcakes hot out of the oven, I realized that I had created a new crowd-pleasing Super Bowl tradition.

Butternut Squash Mac and Cheese Cupcakes

When I told my son that we were having noodle cupcakes for lunch, he was super excited:  "Noodle cupcakes!!  Noodle cupcakes!!" he repeated again and again.  All noodles are the same to my son at this point (there is one exception to this, which I'll detail below), so I didn't bother specifying that they were butternut squash mac and cheese cupcakes. 

Summertime Stuffing Shots

If you had asked me about stuffing last summer, I would have assumed that you were speaking of teddy bear innards and told you about my stuffing-related run in with the law (I'll share that at the end of this post).  This summer, however, my focus is on the edible kind of stuffing - savory bread pudding loaded with farm-fresh vegetables.


Serve summertime stuffing shots in snazzy shot glasses at your next dinner party.  Call the course an amuse-bouche rather than an appetizer for added hip points. Or, if you are a purist - someone who believes that stuffing must literally be stuffed in something - stay tuned for my next post.

Savory Cupcakes - Fig, Goat Cheese, and Onion

Have you ever thought you were going to drink Sprite, only to find that your server had mistakenly refilled your glass with water?  While water can be satisfying, if caught unaware, the sip can be strange and unnerving.  Likewise, when you hand someone a savory cupcake, you have to warn them to not expect a sugar rush (although with my savory cupcakes, the onion on the top should be a bit of an indicator).  Once savory cupcake tasters have clear expectations, they can settle in and enjoy a unique culinary experience.

My friend Danielle best described these fig, goat cheese, and grilled onion savory cupcakes as follows:

It tastes like dinner.  You know how after you've had a good meal, you are left with a sweet satisfied feeling in your mouth?  That's this cupcake.

The cupcakes were dense and biscuit-like, and while I chose to top them with a light spread of fig and goat cheese frosting, they would also be well received served naked (the cupcakes - not you) during a cocktail party.