Meat Birthday Cake!

When making a meat birthday cake, you must always be on your guard. People will do anything to get at it before they are supposed to.

This was a great cake!
I will definitely be making it again.

Here's what you'll need to make one of your own:

One pound of lean ground beef
One pound of ground pork
One pound of ground chicken
Two cups of brown bread crumbs
3/4 cup of A1 steak sauce
Four eggs
One large onion minced
Salt and pepper
Large pot of mashed potatoes
one cup grated cheese of your choice
Half a jar of Presidents Choice Bacon Marmalade
Eight bacon roses
Edible flowers for garnish
Maggs grew us some nasturtium flowers and leaves for this cake. They were peppery and delicious and gave the cake a fabulous colour splash.

I used to food processor to whiz up a couple of cups of brown bread crumbs. These are fresh crumbs, not dried. I don't think it will make a huge difference if you use dried.

I added the meat, eggs, A1 sauce, onions and salt and pepper to the crumbs and mixed it all up with my hands.

Then we split the meat mix into two ten inch round cake pans and flattened out the top with a spatula.

Put it in a 375 degree oven for about 45 minutes. Then pull it out and smear some of that PC bacon marmalade onto each cake top and let it sink in a bit. I put my meat cakes onto a wire wrack to make them easier to get to while I was assembling the cake. You don't want them to cool..... assemble and serve the cake right away.

We used a pizza sheet pan to build our cake. I was worried about the hot meat cake breaking our glass cake stand. Add the first layer of meat and then add all the grated cheese in an even layer on top of it.

Add the second meat layer on to the first and start piling the potatoes op on top of there. Work quickly, it cools down fast.

Use a large cake icing spatula to smooth the potatoes onto the meat cake. It really is just like icing a cake.

I put some potato icing into a freezer bag and wrapped it in a towel so I could grab onto it. I cut a corner of the bag off and used it to pipe icing potato around the bottom and top edges of the cake.

Maggs made some delicious beef and onion gravy and some of our favorite Brussels sprouts. We left the potatoes out.

Now... we just have to figure out how to fit this into a sandwich....

You want a slice?

Bacon Roses

Here is the method I used to make the bacon roses for the top Of Mr. Jimmy's Meat Cake!!!!

Bacon pretty much does make everything taste better and now that I've kicked that pesky gall bladder to the curb, I can pretty much indulge in whatever strikes my fancy.

Does this cake make me look fat?

All you need to make these delicious roses are regular cut bacon strips and toothpicks.

Roll up a strip of bacon.

Stick two toothpicks into the meaty end in a cross pattern as shown. You want the fatty bit to be the top of the rose so the fat cooks off and the rose kind of blooms a bit. You'll see why. If you put the fatty part to the bottom it won't crisp up.

Stand the rose up so it sits on the end the toothpicks are in and roll the edges of the bacon down so they curl. It spreads the little guys out a bit more if you give it a gentle press when your done turning the edge.

Place them on a parchment lined baking sheet and bake them low and slow. I put mine in at 375 degrees for about 20 minutes. I made these before my meat cake and reheated them for serving.