Yes that's what I said CUPCAKES ! I had an idea for a Thanksgiving side, I actually had an idea for MacNcheese with bacon cupcakes but MacNcheese is my daughters bailiwick so... As a first attempt they turned out pretty good and I'll try again for our Winter Solstice meal

Step 1: From the Pantry

I used a 5lb bag of baking potatoes
2lbs of bacon
2 large chunks of cheese
2 medium containers of sour cream
1 cup of mayonnaise (not shown)
2 1/2 sticks of butter

Step 2: Preperation

I cooked off the bacon and of course saved the drippings, washed and baked the potatoes approx 90 minutes until crushable. Shred the cheese ( I don't like preshredded cheese, it never seems to melt as well)

Step 3: Potatoes

In retrospect I should have cooked the potatoes a little longer, I didn't realize the large chunks were so uncooked, I just squeezed them by hand but you might want to use a masher or other implement

Step 4: Dressing/sauce

I made a dressing very close to my grandmothers potato salad dressing, 1/2 cup of hot bacon grease with a 1/4lb of butter melted in, add 1/4 cup of apple cider vinegar, 3 cups of sourcream and 1 cup of mayonnaise, stir until well combined

Step 5: 1st Assembly

in a large bowl combine your cooked and crumbled bacon, cheese , potatoes and sauce and refrigerate

Step 6: Cupcake Time !

those of you who have seen my other food posts will realize this is NOT my kitchen, it's my daughters

I used paper liners and foil cupcake trays, neither was a good choice if you have real cupcake pans USE then and grease them well! Stuff each cupcake mold as tightly as you can and bake in a 350f oven for about 30 minutes or until the tops are nicely browned

Step 7: Observations and Hindsight

As I said in the body of the post, be sure to bake your potatoes long enough or use smaller potatoes and a lot less of them! fortunately the potato mix is tasty cold because I only used a small portion of the mix for 18 cupcakes. Don't use paper cupcake wrappers and if you can use a real cupcake pan.

Over all this experiment worked, of course it's potatoes, bacon and cheese so it almost has to. I like my brothers suggestion of topping with more cheese before baking (not so sure about the spray cheese part)