Looking for the perfect weeknight meal? These Muffin Tin Lasagna Cupcakes will result in a dinner the entire family will enjoy.
I love lasagna. Layers of meat and cheese baked until it becomes all ooey and gooey, what’s not to love, right? What I don’t love about lasagna is the multiple steps to make it and its very long cooking time. Usually, I don’t have a lot of time to make dinner during the week so I came up with a simpler way to make lasagna on a weeknight – Muffin Tin Lasagna Cupcakes.
Let’s Begin
Muffin Tin Lasagna Cupcakes begin with a few simple ingredients: ground beef, lasagna noodles, ricotta cheese, mozzarella cheese and marinara sauce. To prepare the Muffin Tin Lasagna Cups I browned the ground beef, seasoning it with salt, garlic powder and pepper as it cooked and boiled the lasagna noodles according to package directions.
While the ground beef and noodles were cooking, I preheated my oven and prepared my muffin tins by lightly greasing them with olive oil. Once the ground beef was browned I then added pasta sauce to the pan and simmered for another 5 minutes.
Assembling the Muffin Tin Lasagna Cups was quick and easy.
To start the assembly, I cut the lasagna noodles down the middle (vertically) to create to equal sized halves. Then, I layered the two noodle halves into the muffin cup before filling with layers of beef and marinara mixture and ricotta cheese before topping with mozzarella cheese. This process was continued with each muffin cup until all of the muffin cups were filled with lasagna. When finished, your muffin pan should look like this.
Finally, I placed the Muffin Tin Lasagna Cupcakes in the oven and baked them for 30 minutes until the noodles were cooked and the meat and cheese were combined and melted.
After spending time in the oven I then plated the Muffin Tin Lasagna Cupcakes on a plate and topped them with chopped parsley before serving. Paired with warm, Italian bread it literally was the prefect weeknight meal.
Muffin Tin Lasagna Cups
Ingredients
- 12 lasagna noodles uncooked
- 1 lb. 450 g extra-lean ground beef
- 1 jar 650ML of your favorite pasta sauce
- 1 cup ricotta cheese
- 1 cup mozzarella cheese
- salt pepper and garlic powder to taste
- parsley chopped
- Serve with garlic bread optional
Instructions
- Cook noodles as directed on package, drain.
- Heat oven to 350°F. Brown meat in large skillet on medium-high heat adding salt, pepper and garlic powder to taste to the meat while it is cooking. Stir in pasta sauce; simmer on medium-low heat 5 min., stirring occasionally.
- Cut noodles in half vertically. Place two noodles halves in greased muffin tin cup. Spread 2 Tbsp. ricotta onto each noodle; top with 1/4 cup meat sauce. Sprinkle with cheeses. Top with additional ricotta and meat to layer before finishing the more mozzarella cheese.
- Cover and bake 25 min. or until heated through, uncovering for the last 10 min. Cool 5 min. before removing from muffin pans to serve. Top with chopped parsley.
Lasagna on a weeknight, could it get any better than this?
Enjoy!
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