Pizza Meatloaf Muffins

I've had a jar of pizza sauce sitting in the pantry for a while, and when I set out to make different kinds of meatloaf this one sounded like a sure winner. Pizza sauce, spicy sausage, garlic, extra Italian seasonings, and a surprising hint of Parmesan really reads pizza. I took these over to finish cooking while hanging out with Alice here--she liked the idea of pizza, but meat in muffins sounded terrible to her--it has veggies! I couldn't get her to try any. Though she also thought the idea of adding carrots to cake sounded terrible.

Ingredients: 

8 oz Spicy Chicken Sausage/Ground Turkey
2 tablespoons pizza sauce
2/3 cup zucchini shredded and blotted dry
1/3 cup Italian seasoned breadcrumbs
1/8 cup roasted red pepper
1/3 cup mushrooms and onions
1 1/2 tbs Parmesan grated
Italian seasoning mix
salt and pepper

I did a mix of beef and chicken sausage, so it would have that nice pizza sausage taste. I measured the meat into a bowl, I added all of the rest of the ingredients and went to work mixing it up. It went into the muffin tin and baked for 25 minutes.

The Verdict: The sausage was extremely spicy, so while it had a nice pizza taste, it mostly read spicy sausage. It also had a really loose texture, more crumbly than I would have liked. I think this could work better with a different binder, with less sausage, and topped with the pizza sauce. But it wasn't bad--I like sausage, and I could still enjoy it in pieces. Before I bake the rest, I'll try adding some more binder and more pizza sauce. [Edit: What I really need to do is mix the sausage in more--the rest of the muffins had a much milder sausage flavor, and the extra pizza sauce helped enhance that flavor as well]