Lamb Cupcakes? An April Food Recipe Competition

As April Fool's Day was on April 1st, I have offered to help out with the Judging of April's VeryGoodRecipes.com Food Cooking Competition. The theme for this challenge has been selected by 7 food Bloggers.  Each judge is also presenting his or her own recipe of the theme they selected. The judges will select the winners at the end of the challenge (and of course we cannot win!).

In order to participate, you need to enter a recipe on the theme "April Fool". Your dish must appear to be something, but is actually made out of something else entirely! Here are a few examples:

Watermelons made out of Cherry Jelly in a Lime skin by JelloMistress

Sunny side up Fried Eggs made of Apricots & Yogurt by Wayferer

And so, here is my "April Fool" Recipe...


Zack's Lamb Cupcakes with Minted Mash

Lamb Cupcakes with Mashed Potato & Mint Jelly!

Lamb Cupcake Ingredients:

1/2 kg minced Lamb

100g white breadcrumbs

1/2 medium Red onion - chopped

1/2 tsp finely chopped Parsley

1/4 tsp finely chopped Rosemary

1/4 tsp finely chopped Thyme

1 tsp Worcestershire sauce

1/3 tsp Rock salt

1/3 tsp Black pepper

1/2 tsp Dijon mustard

1 medium egg

For the Mash

1 kg potatoes

50g Butter

Salt & white pepper

Mint Jelly

Set the oven to 180C / 350F / Gas Mark 4.

My Method:

1. Place the minced lamb, breadcrumbs, red onion, herbs, worchestershire sauce, seasoning and mustard in a large bowl. Mix everything together well using your fingers to ensure that it is evenly combined.

2. Add the egg and mix into the rest of the ingredients with a wooden spoon - stirring well.

3. Press this into your Cupcake cases and give them a little indent in the centre with a teaspoon. They will rise a little in the cooking and this will help give them a flat top.

4. Pop them into the pre-heated oven and bake for 35 minutes until cooked.

5. Meanwhile boil the potatoes, strain & mash very smooth with the butter, salt and white pepper. Pipe the mashed potato on top of the 'cup-meat-cake' as you would do with butter-cream for a normal cupcake.

6. Drop a little dollop of the Mint Jelly on top!

The finished Lamb Cupcakes - I guess you could call them a Cupcake Shepherds Pie! 

The competition runs from 1st April until the 30th April 2012 inclusive.

The challenge is open to everyone, whether you have a food blog or not.

In order to participate, you need to enter a recipe on the theme "April Fool" - a dish that appears to be something, but is made out of something else entirely.

• If you have a food blog registered on Very Good Recipes, you just need to publish your recipe on your blog with a link to the challenge page http://verygoodrecipes.com/april-fool-challenge in the text of your recipe. It will then be automatically listed on their competition page.
• If you have a food blog (or a blog with a recipe category or label) but are not yet registered on Very Good Recipes, you can REGISTER HERE in 30 seconds.
• If you do not have a blog, you can participate by sending Stephane your recipe with one or more pictures. He will publish your recipe on Very Good Recipe's Website so that it can be displayed on the challenge page.

The judges for this month's competition are:

• Agnès from Interprétations Culinaires
• Drina from Eaternal Zest
• Francesca from Burro e Zucchero
• Jessie from Jessie CookingMoments
• Lai-Lyn from donnowhat2cook
• Simona from Briciole
• Zack from The Irish Food Guide Blog

They look for foodies to volunteer as judges every month so maybe you can be one too!
For more details see VeryGoodRecipes.com

Best of Luck and Have Fun!

zack