Scotch Cupcake

Most of the time, I'm not a huge fan of foods that are disguised to look like other foods. It's especially deceptive and sensually displeasing when one of those foods is a dessert. It's like, "I want to eat this giant burger, BUT ALL I TASTE IS F***ING CAKE!!". However, sometimes these things can work and turn out delicious. Case in point, our scotch cupcake. This is a combination of scotch eggs (hard boiled egg encased in sausage meat and breadcrumbs) and cupcakes (rainbows encased in sunshine and happiness). Here's how to make your own scotch cupcakes:




1. Hard boil some eggs. Meanwhile, create your meat mixture. We mixed ground beef with ground sausage and added spices to taste.





2. Peel the eggs and encase in meat. Place in cupcake pan lined with cupcakes wrappers, and bake at 375F.






3. Top with mashed potatoes, and sprinkle with chives. We used a piping bag to get the potatoes to look like icing.




I'm sorry to disappoint the booze enthusiasts out there but you may have noticed that this recipe does not actually contain any alcohol, regardless of the name. You're gonna have to wait until we make vodka muffins or something along those lines.

Not quite sure what some of these are supposed to be

LNC Double Down

If you follow the Late Night Chefs, you may have noticed that chicken hasn't been used in any of our previous recipes. Since this project is a take on a KFC menu item, it makes sense that we would be popping our chicken cherry, right? Sorry, not this time. The KFC Double Down is a fantastic example of what makes good food, and I applaud their effort at sending out a big "F you" to so-called 'health experts' and 'nutritionists'. But we will not be outdone.

The LNC Double Down is not made with lean chicken breast meat. We used two 20 ounce round steaks, 6 strips of bacon, two layers of monterey jack, and smothered it with our homemade Mac Sauce (see previous entry). The final product weighed in at almost 3 pounds. If you want to make your own, here's how:



1. Set up 3 stations: plain flour, eggs and seasoned flour. We seasoned our flour with a variety of spices, including salt, pepper, garlic powder, chili powder, cayenne, etc.







2. Dredge each steak in the first flour station, soak in egg, and then move into seasoned flour. Let the steak rest for about 10-15 min.








3. Heat up a pan with enough oil to cover the entire bottom. Fry steak on each side for about 5 minutes for crispy coating and medium rare doneness.





4. Lay slices of monterey jack cheese to cover the bottom steak. Now is the time to fill with as much bacon as you want.





5. Add another layer of cheese and top with Mac Sauce. Put the second steak on top and place in oven to melt cheese and cook meat to desired doneness.




Sorry chicken, you're going to have to wait for another post until we purchase your raw body parts, cook them into some kind of gut-busting piece of awesome and devour you. And when we do, you can bet we're going to put KFC to shame again.



I need some sort of sign off. Marcus OUT? Nah. Lame.

- Angie, Laura & Marcus

Mac Sauce

Here's a riddle: What is made up of 2 all beef patties, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions and a sesame seed bun? If you answered 'Big Mac', you're WRONG. A Big Mac just is not a Big Mac without the special sauce, or Mac Sauce. I wish they bottled the stuff and sold it, because I would buy it by the drum. But since they don't, we made a close copycat version to share with you.

The necessary ingredients are: mayo, french dressing, relish and sugar. This one doesn't really require any instructions except 'mix'.



This stuff is like the bacon of the sauce world. Spread it, dip it, or sip it. Delicious.

Meat Roll-Up

If you haven't been living in a hole for the past decade, you must have noticed the recent trend of restaurants and fast food places with "healthier choice" menus. It seems like everyone's offering salads, whole grains and smaller portions nowadays. It's disgusting. But worry not - these menus are the boy bands of the food world, and like any other trend they will soon become sparse. And old. And fat. And will try to make a failed comeback years later after reinventing themselves when we barely remember what they were. Then we can go back to eating better tasting foods with tons of calories and fat. Just to make sure we're ahead of the curve, we created something that could probably kill a child or a small adult if ingested without caution.

In true Late Night Chef fashion, we started making this thing around 2am. There was debate over what to call it, with names like "Meat Torpedo" and "Meat Slug" being thrown around. Since I forget what we actually decided on, here's how we made the Meat Roll-Up:



1. Ingredients: Sausages, cheese, ham, ground beef, bacon, beer and flour. Plus any seasonings, and skewers to hold the bacon in place. (Pictured right: our grocery list.)






2. Cook the sausages fully using any method, and wrap with a layer of cheese and ham.






3. Create a mat of ground beef, and wrap the ham/cheese/sausage. Make sure any holes are sealed up. We also added another layer of cheese here.





4. Wrap beef/ham/cheese/sausage with bacon, and use skewers to hold in place.





5. Place in 400F oven until ground beef is cooked through.







6. Meanwhile, mix up some beer batter. We used a simple mix of flour, salt, Stiegl beer and some cayenne.






7. Fill a pan with enough oil to cover at least half of the meat roll. Set heat on medium-high (or about 375F) and deep fry to your hearts content.




We made 8 of these things. Each one was about 8 inches in length and weighed well over a pound. Afterwards we put on bathing suits and slip-slided around our grease covered kitchen.


- Angie, Charles, Howie, Marcus & Michelle

Giant Ice Cream Sandwich

Summertime is fast approaching, and since we're poor students with no a/c, we decided that a tasty treat would be a good way to cool down. Of course, when the Late Night Chefs make a tasty treat, we don't eff around. We pulled a new tool out of our arsenal this time around - "gigantisizing", which basically means taking something and making it bigger. It's as if we took the classic ice cream cookie sandwich and gave it double dose of Viagra. I guess that's why it took so long to finish (hey-oo!). Here's how to make your very own giant ice cream sandwich:





1. Buy large amounts of chocolate chip cookie mix/dough and vanilla ice cream. Follow directions for cookie mix if necessary.





2. Line two same-sized cookie sheets with greased aluminum foil or parchment paper. Spread cookie dough evenly to entirely cover the cookie sheets. If you only have one sheet like we did, just make two batches.





3. Bake the ridiculously big cookies at a lower temperature than instructions, otherwise the middle may not bake fully while the outside burns. We used 225F.





4. Wait until the cookies cool down to room temperature, or place in fridge. Evenly cover one side with ice cream, and flip the other side on top. Peel off aluminum foil and enjoy.



I made the mistake of trying to eat 1/8 of this thing by myself. Needless to say, I could not finish it, and I will not touch another ice cream sandwich for the rest of my life. Maybe. By the way, here's a fun thing to do: hold the sandwich up and pretend you're a little person.




- Allen, Angie, Carol, Daniel, Laura, Marcus, Michelle & Shannon