Halloween "Mummy Meatloaf"

Has it really been 2 1/2 years since I wrote in this blog? Geesh. To be honest, I just haven't been inspired. But, it's Halloween and I've got to help Gilles create a crazy dish for his office party today. So, we've chosen the "Yummy Mummy Meatloaf" from the October 22, 2012 issue of Woman's World magazine. I've never really had a lot of success with recipes from this magazine except for a really delish chicken cacciatore a few years back. I'm really taking a chance with this one. Because Gilles needs to bring a Halloweeny dish to his office party today. If this doesn't turn out, he's gonna have to resort to cutesy cupcakes from Superstore! And it's one of those cases where the picture of the recipe looks so great, you just gotta try it! So here goes. Gonna get my ingredients together (eggs, ground beef, onion, chili seasoning mix, to,ato sauce, nacho chips, breadstick dough, and olives) and I'll be right back.

Well, after putting the ingredients in the bowl, it came out quite juicy. What with 3 eggs and 8 ounces of tomato sauce, the loaf seemed slimy. But.... It formed nicely on the pan. I was a little worried for a second. Here's the before.

It needed to be 14" x 3 3/4". It's now baking for 45 minutes at 350 degrees. We're just making our famous home made salsa as an accompaniment while the meatloaf bakes.

The meatloaf, after 25 minutes of cooking, has spread wider than the 3 3/4" it's supposed to be. I hope I have enough of the breadstick dough (which serves as the mummy's wrappings) to wrap the meatloaf!

Ok, so we couldn't actually find breadstick dough, we used refrigerated pizza dough as a replacement. We simply stretched it out, used a pizza cutter to cut strips and it was perfect.

It was quite a chore to get a 14" meatloaf onto another pan in order to "wrap" it with the dough. We had to use 4 spatulas and 2 sets of hands. But, we did it and we wrapped our mummy perfectly. It's now baking at 375 degrees for about 16 minutes, to brown the dough, and make it look like old mummy wrappings.

 

From a distance, it actually looks like we've prepared a little body for mummification because of the way Gilles wrapped the dough to look like it had a chest and feet. Very cute. He did an awesome job! We decided to put it on a pizza pan with holes on the bottom so the dough would cook somewhat underneath the meatloaf. I placed a simple cookie sheet on the bottom rack of the oven to catch any drippings.

 

So, it has come out of the oven looking nicely browned and therefore, like it just came out of an ancient tomb! LOL

 

We're going to wait a few minutes to let it cool off before we place it on our tray and before we put the eyes on the mummy.

And here is the finished product!

Isn't that just adorable? The wrapping looks perfect, especially around the head. I decided to put some nacho chips around the mummy to give it a sort of "dirty tomb" look. That plus people can nosh on them with our delicious, one of a kind salsa! Oh, and the spider is there because he crawled out of the tomb with the mummy....

Let's hope this little mummy tastes as good as he looks! We'll only find out after Gilles' party. So stay tuned for a taste update!

If you're interested in this recipe, check out the Woman's World Magazine October 22, 2012 issue, or send me a message and I'll get it to you!

UPDATE:

Success! The crowd loved it. It came in tied for first place in the "creative dish" category, but lost to the guacamole dish. I wasn't there, so I can't tell you what that was exactly. So, it was a hit at the party and it wasn't that difficult to put together. Great party food!