Ravioli with Brown Butter and Sage

Continuing on with my valiant effort to use up all my fresh herbs while summer is still summer, I bring you one of my most favorite, easiest, most crowd-pleasing dishes ever. There is something a dish with the words "browned butter" in the title that just makes you feel warm and fuzzy all over. Well, it works for me, anyway. Browned butter is exactly what it sounds like: butter that has been melted and simmered over low heat until it starts to turn slightly, well, brown. And with that browning it takes on a bit of a nutty taste that is rich and wonderful.

So this sauce calls not only for fabulous brown butter, but also for a generous amount of this:

That would be the acres and acres of sage in my back yard. Okay, it is only a wooden barrel-ful of sage, but this stuff is tenacious, and it needs to be dealt with. And one of the most satisfying ways is with this scrumptious recipe. Start by boiling up your favorite ravioli - I like the nice big round cheese kind. While the ravioli is cooking, you melt some butter in your favorite skillet and add some chopped shallots, stirring them around until they soften. Then toss in those fresh sage leaves and cook them until they just start getting crispy. All of this is going to take about 5 minutes, and by now the butter will be getting just a little brown. Add a little salt and pepper and pour the whole thing over your cooked ravioli. Last but not least toss very gently with some grated Parmesan cheese, and there you are! The entire process took you about 15 minutes, and you are in ravioli heaven.

More herb-using strategies to come in the next post.

Ravioli with Brown Butter and Sage, adapted from Real Simple

1 package cheese ravioli

6 tablespoons unsalted butter

2 medium shallots, sliced thinly

20 fresh sage leaves

Salt and fresh ground pepper

3/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese

1. Cook ravioli according to package directions.

2. Heat butter in a skillet over medium low heat until it foams. Add shallots and cook, stirring, for 2 minutes. Add the sage and cook until leaves turn slightly crisp, another 2-3 minutes. Season with salt and pepper.

3. Add cooked ravioli to the skillet and toss gently. Add 1/3 cup parmesan and toss gently again. Divide among dishes and top with remaining parmesan and another grinding of fresh pepper.

Click here for printable recipe

Rosemary Skewers

Yes, it is almost September (how is that POSSIBLE??) and as you know from some of my earlier posts, I am in major "use it or lose it" mode with my beloved barrels of herbs that live right outside my kitchen door.  Their days are numbered, and so I am pulling out all my recipes that involve fresh herbs so that I can have another few weeks of herb extravaganza before things start getting chilly out there.  And in case you want to join me, all my posts this week are going to feature some kind of wonderful herb or another, starting with these rosemary skewers.

I have to admit, it took me a while to warm up to rosemary.  For the longest time I only knew about dried rosemary in the jar - those sharp little needles that could be used as miniature weapons in a pinch.  But somewhere along the line I discovered soft, fragrant fresh rosemary, and a light dawned.  Now I grow it in one of the whiskey barrels outside my back door, and this summer it just went crazy..I have a TON of it.



So I took the opportunity to try out a recipe I found on the always fabulous Pioneer Woman site.  Sometimes on a Friday evening the Southern husband and I will skip actual dinner and just have some kind of interesting appetizer-type food for supper, and this fit the bill perfectly.  You take stems of rosemary - and for obvious reasons these need to be sturdy stems (which they usually are).  Strip off the leaves except for a couple of inches on the top.  Then all you have left to do is skewer whatever you like on to these gorgeous smelling skewers.  I used fresh mozzarella, grilled marinated artichoke hearts and pieces of genoa salami that had been folded in quarters.  The original recipe called for olives as well.  You could really used any kind of cheese you like,  you could try sun-dried tomatoes, pieces of folded ham...you get the idea.

Some rosemary skewers, the setting sun, and sitting outside with your honey on a Friday evening -- does it get any better?

Rosemary Skewers,  from The Pioneer Woman

• Rosemary sprigs, leaved stripped except for the top 2 inches
• Cubes of fresh mozzarella
• Marinated artichoke hearts
• Genoa salami, sliced thin and folded
• 1/2 cup olive oil
• 3 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
• Salt and fresh ground pepper
• Ground thyme

1. Thread the cheese, artichoke hearts and salami on to the rosemary skewers in any order or amount you like.

2. Mix the olive oil, vinegar and spices until thoroughly combined and then brush onto the skewers.  Arrange on a plate and enjoy!

Click here for printable recipe

Honey Chicken Skewers

We are heading scandalously fast towards the end of summer, and so I am sending the Southern husband out to the grill at every available opportunity.  I'm not sure why, since he is perfectly wonderful about grilling in a snowstorm.

But nevertheless, grilling just isn't the same when it's not summertime, so our grill is getting a lot of action.  This recipe is a fun, eat-with-your-hands deal that is ready in absolutely no time.  You need to pick yourself up a packet of those thin wooden skewers, and be sure to give them a good soaking in water before you put the chicken strips on them.  As you can see from the picture, even soaking wet they still got a little charred.  Which is fine - you just want them to hold together for the most important part, which is the EATING.

But before you get to the eating there is the making.  You cut up chicken breasts into strips and thread them on to your skewers.  Fire up the grill and cook them for about 3-4 minutes, then flip 'em over and baste them with a quick sauce of ketchup, honey and soy sauce...and that's it!  I put a few ears of corn on the grill alongside the skewers and 10 minutes later we were digging in.  So keep that grill going as long as you can....

Honey Chicken Skewers, adapted from Real Simple

• 1/2 cup ketchup
• 2 tablespoons honey
• 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
• 1 1/2 pounds boneless, skinless chicken breasts
• kosher salt and pepper
• canola oil, for the grill
• 6 ears corn, shucked
• 1 tablespoon unsalted butter, cut into pieces

1. Place twenty 8-inch wooden skewers in water to soak. Heat grill to medium-high. In a small bowl, combine the ketchup, honey, and Worcestershire sauce; set aside. 

2. Slice the chicken lengthwise into twenty 1/2-inch-thick strips. Thread each strip onto a wooden skewer. Season with 1/4 teaspoon salt and 1/4 teaspoon pepper. 

3. Lightly oil the grill. Cook the chicken, turning occasionally, until cooked through, 6 to 8 minutes, basting with the ketchup mixture during the last 2 minutes of cooking. 

4. Meanwhile, grill the corn, turning occasionally, until slightly charred, 3 to 4 minutes. 

Serve with the chicken. 

 Click here for printable recipe

Crescent Roll Burritos

All you lovers of completely authentic Mexican food, I apologize and please close your eyes and cover your ears.  Because this recipe, which is quick and easy and tasty, involves one of my favorite cooking ingredients, and that is a tube of crescent roll dough.  I'm sorry, but it's true, and I'm not ashamed to admit it.  Crescent roll dough in a tube, you ROCK.

Here's the deal.  You make whatever kind of taco filling you like.  Since I was already down the road with the crescent roll dough, I opted to stay with the theme and make good old taco meat with ground beef, chopped onion and a packet of Old El Paso taco seasoning.  You can add in some refried beans as well if you want.  Personally, I am not a refried beans lover, but you should do your own thing.

Next you separate the crescent roll dough into rectangles, pushing on the perforations to seal them.  Ladle s few spoonfuls of beef onto each rectangle, a little salsa and a little shredded cheese.  Roll them up, pinch the edges to seal them, and pop them in the oven for about 20 minutes.  From there on in, you can get as creative as you want.  I made a sort of homemade salsa with chopped tomato, onion, lime juice, parsley and jalapeno and ladled it on the top with some sour cream.  You can drape some cheese over the top and pop it back in the oven for a few minutes until the cheese melts.  Throw some guacamole on the plate...whatever catches your fancy.  The world is your burrito.

That's what you get when we Irish girls start cooking Mexican food -- mass chaos.  But it did taste good!

Crescent Roll Burritos, adapted from a Pillsbury recipe (of course!)

1/2 pound ground beef

2 tablespoons chopped onion

2 tablespoons taco seasoning

1/2 cup water

1/2 cup refried beans (optional)

2 cans crescent dinner rolls

1/2 cup salsa plus more for garnish

1/2 cup shredded cheddar or jack cheese

Sour cream, guacamole or any other garnish you like!

1. Preheat oven to 350.  Spray cookie sheet with cooking spray.

2. Cook ground beef and onion in skillet until thoroughly cooked, drain.  Stir in taco seasoning and water and cook over medium for about 5 minutes.  Stir in beans if using.

3. Separate dough into eight rectangles and press perforations to seal.  Divide beef mixture over rectangles and top with a tablespoon of salsa and a tablespoon or so of cheese.  Starting with the short end of the dough, roll up each rectangle and pinch the edges to seal.  Place seam side down on cookie sheet.

4. Bake for 20 minutes or until golden brown.  Serve with more salsa, guacamole, sour cream or whatever catches your fancy.

Click here for printable recipe

Peanut Butter Popcorn

We are big old popcorn lovers in this house.  And not just the microwave variety of popcorn, although I am perfectly okay with that in a pinch.  No, we have a jar of the old-fashioned kernels, and a great Cuisinart popcorn popper than involves a little oil and some salt and melting up some butter.  And I thought that was pretty much the best route to old-fashioned popcorn.  Until my friend L sent me this.

And I have to admit, I was a doubter.  Six ears of rock-hard corn.  It sat in my cabinet for a good long while, until the day that I decided to try this recipe I had kicking around for peanut butter popcorn.  And since I knew the popcorn was going to get drenched in a coating of peanut butter marshmallow wonderfulness, I thought, why not try the corn-cobs?  So I hauled them out of the cabinet and took a look at the label.

The deal is that you take one of those ears, put it in a brown paper bag, put it in the microwave for a couple of minutes, and voila!  Perfect and delicious popcorn without a chemical in site.  What took me so long???   I'm a believer.

So then it was on to the peanut butter popcorn, which as I mentioned above, involves making a mixture of marshmallow and peanut butter and regular butter, melting the whole thing together and stirring it into a bowl of popcorn and peanuts.  Spread it out on some wax paper, let it cool and harden, and life is pretty close to perfect for a while.  

Next time I am going to drizzle just a little melted chocolate over the whole thing - what do you think???

Peanut Butter Popcorn, adapted from Allrecipes

2 3.5 ounce packages microwave popcorn, popped (or the equivalent)

1/2 cup butter

3/4 cup brown sugar

1/4 cup peanut butter

20 large marshmallows

1/2 cup salted peanuts

 1. Pour popcorn and peanuts into a large bowl.  Preheat oven to 250.  Line cookie sheet with foil and spray with cooking spray.

 2. In a glass or plastic bowl, combine the margarine, brown sugar, and marshmallows. Cook at 1 minute intervals in the microwave, stirring between each time, until the mixture is melted and smooth. 

 3. Stir in the peanut butter until well blended. Pour the melted mixture over the popcorn, and stir quickly to coat the corn before it cools.  Pour in single layer onto cookie sheet.

 4.  Bake for 30 minutes, stirring after 15 minutes.

 5. Cool, and I dare you not to eat the entire batch in one sitting.  :)

Click here for printable recipe

Jelly Donut Bread Pudding

So, a few days ago I posted about my baby doughnut muffins, and just as a reminder here they are below, in all their one inch high cuteness.

Because the recipe is for muffins that you make in your mini-muffin pan, you end up with quite a few of these little darlings. And believe me, I did my level best to eat every single one of them in the time period during which doughnuts are best, which is within 24 hours of being made. Know what I mean? There's nothing quite so sad as biting into a doughnut and realizing that it is just past its prime. The loss! The regret! The missed opportunity!

Now with these guys, I probably had about 10 or so left over. And I just couldn't bear to toss them out. The dog graciously volunteered to take them off my hands, but she's on a diet. And then I got a brainstorm. Bread pudding...but with the leftover doughnuts.

I put together a quick mixture of eggs, milk and sugar, crumbled up the doughnuts and stirred the whole thing together. When I poured it into my baking dish, there were tiny bits and pieces of jelly here and there...but not enough for me to feel totally HONEST about it being called jelly doughnut bread pudding. So I opened up the fridge and found some reinforcements.

Stonewall Kitchen to the rescue AGAIN. I took a few spoonfuls of this, swirled it around in the doughnut mixture, popped the whole thing in the oven, and a little while later...bread pudding heaven. I served it with a little vanilla ice cream, and oh yes.

Waste not, want not! Especially when it comes to anything with the word "doughnut" in it...

Jelly Donut Bread Pudding

• 4 cups torn pieces of donut
• 2 cups milk
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• Jelly

1. Preheat over to 375 and grease an 8x8 baking dish.

2. Mix milk, eggs, sugar, vanilla and cinnamon together well. Combine with donut pieces and mix well. Let stand for a few minutes until the donuts have absorbed some of the milk mixture.

3. Put donut mixture into baking dish. Drop spoonfuls of jelly on top of mixture and swirl gently to barely combine.

4. Bake for 40 minutes until sides of pudding begin to brown. Serve as is or with vanilla or strawberry ice cream.

Click here for printable recipe

Shrimp in a Jar

Okay, so I know this particular dish is half novelty and half supper, but honestly, the whole thing made me just ridiculously happy, and how often can you say that about a Tuesday night supper?

This all started with a trip to Costco, where the Southern husband (who THINKS he has more self-control than I do at Costco but really doesn't) not only bought a huge bag of shrimp but also a Costco sized bag of avocados. Now, the shrimp can be sub-divided into many freezer bags and stored away for future meals. The avocados? Not so much. It was use-it-or-lose-it time, avocado-wise. And since I am a girl who loves a challenge, I spent a week making many avocado-based things while still trying to keep it interesting. We had:

Chilled Avocado Cucumber Soup

BLA's (Bagel with Lox and Avocado)

Lots of guacamole

And...Shrimp in a Jar, which is basically layers of chopped lettuce, fresh tomato salsa, cooked chopped shrimp, mashed avocado with lime juice, all topped with crumbled tortilla chips. But the beauty part is the jar. Why? I have no idea -- but for some reason it was just so much fun! I picked up these little wide-mouth jars at The Container Store, and once you have finished eating your supper out of them they make GREAT little storage devices. They are currently lined up on my counter with four different types of cookies in them.

I'm already thinking up new possibilities for what the Southern husband is already calling "jar food." In the meantime, here's the recipe.

Shrimp in a Jar, adapted from Epicurious

• 2 medium tomatoes, chopped
• 1/4 cup chopped white onion
• 1/4 cup finely chopped cilantro or parsley
• 1 to 2 teaspoons chopped fresh jalapeno
• 2 tablespoons ketchup
• 2 to 3 tablespoons fresh lime juice, divided
• 1 pound peeled cooked shrimp, cut into 1/2-inch pieces
• 2 firm-ripe avocados
• 2 cups shredded lettuce (I used iceberg)
• 1/2 cup coarsely crumbled tortilla chips

1. Stir together tomatoes, onion, parsley, chile, ketchup, 1 tablespoon lime juice, and 1/2 teaspoon salt.

2. Stir in shrimp and season with salt and pepper.

3. Mash avocados with remaining 1 to 2 tablespoons lime juice and 1/2 teaspoon salt.

4. Divide lettuce among jars and layer shrimp mixture, avocado, and crumbled chips on top.

Click here for printable recipe

Steak with Chimichurri Sauce

Okay, so this is the time of year I start to get panicky about my herbs. I have these great whiskey barrels right outside my kitchen door, and every Mother's Day weekend I plant them full of basil and rosemary and parsley and thyme and sage and tarragon. They are fabulous in June, and wonderful in May. Around mid-August, though, they start getting ornery. Some of them are struggling in the heat, and some of them are getting tall and woody and tough-looking. It's a sure sign that the summer is slowly working its way towards fall, and I go into herb-panic, trying to use 'em or lose'em before that first frost hits.



I know, it's 98 degrees outside and I am worrying about frost, but that's just the kind of calm, laid-back person I am.

Anyway, this recipe is a great way to match up steak cooked on the grill (yumyumyum) with some of those fresh herbs made into a quick and easy sauce that also has a fun name.   Chimichurri sauce - say THAT three times fast.   Chimichurri is a snap to make - you drop a handful of parsley into your trusty food processor or blender, add some garlic, some red wine vinegar, garlic, olive oil, red pepper flakes and salt.  Push the button and thirty seconds later you have a fresh and delicious sauce with just a little bite to it.  Even the Southern husband, who is a card-carrying member of the Steak Is Perfectly Fine Without Any Annoying Sauce On It Club loved this.  So much so that when I was putting the leftover steak away, he made sure that I put the leftover sauce on top of it.  That's when I knew for dang sure I had a hit on my hands.

So, go use those herbs before the snow flies.

Steak with Chimichurri Sauce

• One flank steak
• 1 cup fresh parsley
• 1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
• 1 clove garlic
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon red pepper
• 1/2 cup olive oil (more as needed)

1. Season steak with salt and pepper and grill to your liking, about 5 minutes per side for medium rare.

2. While steak is resting after being grilled, make chimichurra sauce: add all ingredients except olive oil to food processor and process until parsley and garlic are well-chopped.  Add olive oil in a steady stream through processor tube until the sauce is a nice thick consistency.

3. Slice steak against the grain, and garnish with sauce.

Click here for printable recipe

Baby Doughnut Muffins

I'd like to introduce to you my new best friends, which are these adorable little doughnuts. I mean muffins. I mean doughnuts. They are a little bit of both...the basic batter that goes into making those old-fashioned cake doughnuts, but instead of dropping the dough into a vat of boiling oil, you bake them. Which practically makes them health food, in my book. And to make things even more fun, you make them in mini-muffin pans, so they are about one inch high, thereby giving you license to pop at least three or four into your mouth in rapid succession. If you are me, anyway.

Now, a word about that little jelly guy up there. These are perfectly fine as plain old regular baby doughnut muffins, especially because the end of the recipe calls for dunking the tops of the donuts in melted butter and rolling them in cinnamon sugar. (Heart beating faster!!!) But if you want to get really fancy, you can add a little jelly to the picture.

You won't be able to add too much jelly, because these doughnuts do have a pretty firm cake-like texture, but you can get a nice little taste in there.  All you need to do is put a few teaspoons of jelly in a pastry bag, put on the smallest pastry tip, push it into the bottom of the doughnut and give it it a good squeeze.  Instant baby jelly doughnut.  And before you get all worried about the pastry bag part, you can get a nice little inexpensive set at Michaels (click here to see.)

The only problem with this recipe is the fact that you will NOT be able to stop eating these babies once they come out of the oven.  They are only fresh for a day or so,  but even that is not an issue, because pretty soon I am going to put up a post on how I made my leftover doughnuts (yes, there were actually leftovers!) into a jelly doughnut bread pudding.  So, stay tuned to this channel!

Baby Doughnut Muffins, adapted from CHOW

Coating:

1/2 cup granulated sugar
2 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon


Muffins:
8 tablespoons unsalted butter 1 stick, melted
3 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for coating the tin
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 teaspoon fine salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 cup whole milk, at room temperature
2 tablespoons buttermilk, at room temperature
10 tablespoons unsalted butter 1 1/4 sticks, at room temperature
3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons granulated sugar
2 large eggs, at room temperature


1. Combine sugar and cinnamon in a small bowl; set aside.

2. Heat the oven to 375°F and arrange a rack in the middle. Lightly brush a 24-well mini muffin tin
with some of the melted butter, then coat with flour, tapping out any excess; set aside. Reserve
remaining melted butter for applying the cinnamon-sugar coating.

3. In a large bowl, sift together flour, baking powder, salt, nutmeg, and baking soda. In a small
bowl, whisk together milk and buttermilk. Set both aside.

4. Beat butter and sugar on medium-high speed until light in color and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Beat in eggs one at a time until combined.  Stop the mixer and scrape down the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula.
5. With the mixer set on low speed, beat in a quarter of the reserved dry ingredients. Then beat in a
third of the reserved milk mixture. Continue to alternate until all of the remaining ingredients
are incorporated, finishing with the dry ingredients. Do not overmix.

6. Fill the prepared muffin tin wells to just below the rim with batter. Bake until muffins are lightly
golden and firm to the touch, about 15 to 20 minutes. Let cool in the pan for 5 minutes. Remove muffins from the tin and transfer to a wire rack set over a baking sheet. Repeat buttering and
flouring of the muffin tin and bake the remaining batter.

7. To coat the muffins, brush each generously with melted butter and sprinkle generously with
cinnamon-sugar. Serve warm or at room temperature.

8. For jelly doughnuts, allow the muffins to cool and use a small pastry tip tomake a hole in the bottom of each. Fill the pastry bag with your favorite jam, jelly, or citrus
curd and squeeze some into the muffins.

Click here for printable recipe

Framed Goes Out!

Okay, this is a special announcement. Hear ye, hear ye.

Now you KNOW how much I do love my kitchen and everything that goes on in there. But everyone needs a break now and then, and for my, that break comes on Saturday nights, when the Southern husband and I leave the kitchen, the teenager, the dog, the pots, the pans, the dishwasher and the oven behind, and we go OUT to eat.

Yes, actually out. To eat something I haven't actually cooked myself. For the longest time, we were going to the same few places over and over again, until all of the sudden it dawned on me that there was a whole world of different restaurants out there, even here in Northern New Jersey, and we started something called The Restaurant Project, which basically means we are going to a new place every Saturday night.

So here I am, gathering all this great information about these places we have been venturing out to, and so I decided to do what I do, which is blog about them. However, there are so many, and they are so specific to one area (that being the northern NJ/southern NY area) that I decided they needed their own blog. So I'd like to introduce you to my second blog, FRAMED GOES OUT! I'll be posting about once a week, talking about the restaurants we have gone to and liked. I might toss some other food destinations in there, and if I ever get OUT of the NY/NJ area I will definitely post about whatever good eats I run into, but this is going to mainly be a NJ/NY restaurant blog.

So...for all of you who are interested, please click below to take a look around. I'd love to hear your thoughts, comments, suggestions, etc. And for everyone else, I'll still be in my kitchen the other six days of the week, still posting to the original FRAMED, and still very happy you are stopping by.

Here's the link!

FRAMED GOES OUT!

Eggs and Soldiers

Every now and then I wake up on a weekend morning, and I just NEED a poached egg. I need one. Not want. Need. Which for a while was a problem, because the only person I know who can actually make a poached egg with only water and a pan and an egg is my mother, who whips them up effortlessly. For me, the road to the decent poached egg has been a sad and rocky one. Yes, I've tried all the usual tricks, including putting vinegar in the water, and cracking the egg into a teacup and slipping it into the water, and buying an electric egg cooker (which was great for hard boiled eggs and kinda dismal for poached eggs).

All of that left me with disorganized masses of under or overcooked eggs that looked nothing like the neat little round organized eggs that my mama makes me. But that was before I found THESE.


They are called Poach Pods, and they have transformed my life, at least the poached egg part of it. They are little silicone guys, and here's what you do. You bring a pan of water to a slow simmer. Spray one of the pods with Pam, and crack an egg into it. Lay it in the water (it will float!). Cover the pan, and simmer that egg for 4 minutes. Uncover the pan, gently lift out the pod, run a knife or a small spatula around the edge of the egg and it will slide right out. Perfect poached eggs Every Single Time.

Back to the eggs and soldiers: this is one of my all-time favorite comfort food dishes, and here's all it is: a poached egg and a slice of toast that has been buttered and cut into little strips, otherwise known as soldiers. Take a soldier, dunk it into the poached egg, feel like all is right with the world.

That's it, folks -- not even a recipe needed. And because there is no recipe, here's a list of other great things to do with a poached egg:

1. Put it on top of a bowl of buttered Cream of Wheat or grits.

2. Include on the top of a lightly dressed salad of romaine lettuce, croutons and bacon.

3. Slice it into a plate of pasta with some butter, grated parmesan and fresh ground pepper.

4. The old classic: put on top of a plate of hot corned beef hash.

I have to leave and poach an egg now.

Lasagna Cupcakes

Those of you who have been reading this blog lately know that I have developed an alarmingly close relationship with my muffin pan. I blame the French Toast muffins that I made a while back. They turned on a little lightbulb over my head, one that has led me down a road filled with cupcakes of all shapes and sizes. Ice Cream Cupcakes. Macaroni and Cheese Cupcakes. And now what may be my favorites, which are these Lasagna Cupcakes. Yep, that's a bonafide little lasagna up there, complete with layers of pasta, rich meat sauce and three kinds of cheese. Isn't he handsome?

So here's how this works. Instead of using lasagna noodles, you use wonton wrappers. Wonton wrappers are basically super-thin pieces of delicious fresh pasta, and they are perfect for this little exercise. The only thing you have to do is cut the little wonton squares into a round shape that will fit into your muffin tin. This is really easy to do with either a round biscuit cutter, or by putting a juice glass down on a stack of a few wrappers and tracing a sharp knife around the outside of the glass. Don't worry if the first wrapper into the muffin well comess up a little around the edges -- that's actually a good thing, as it will help to hold in your sauce.

Once you do that, it is smooth sailing. You layer in the wrappers, your favorite sauce and the cheese until you have three nice layers. And by the way, you are putting these right into the muffin tins -- no paper muffin cups required. I worried that they would stick, but I let them cool in the pan for about 5 minutes, slid a knife around the edges and a little spatula underneath them and they popped right out.

I'm printing the recipe below pretty close to how I found it on Food.com, but I had some of this great crockpot bolognese sauce already in my freezer, so I skipped the hamburger step. And you can leave the meat out entirely for a vegetarian version...you feel free to be totally you when it comes to lasagna cupcakes!

Lasagna Cupcakes, adapted from Food.com

• One cup of your favorite pasta sauce
• 1 lb hamburger meat
• 18 wonton wrappers
• 8 ounces mozzarella cheese , grated
• 3 ounces parmesan cheese , grated
• 4 ounces ricotta cheese

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees and spray 6 serving muffin tin with Pam
2. Cook hamburger meat, season to taste, drain.
3. Reserve 8 tablespoons of Parmesan and 8 tablespoons of mozzarella—this will be the topping. The remaining cheese will be used in the lasagnas (note you can vary the amount of cheese to taste keeping in mind that the parmesan is salty, the mozzarella is sweet as well as salty and helps to hold the lasagnas together, and the ricotta is sweet and creamy).
4. Start assembling the lasagnas. Line each cupcake mold with a round wonton wrapper. Put a little Parmesan, a little mozzarella, and a little ricotta into each mold. Top with a little meat and a spoonful of sauce. Repeat layers of wonton wrappers, cheeses, meat and sauce, creating 3 layers in all, and ending with sauce. Sprinkle each lasagna with reserved Parmesan and mozzarella.
5. Bake until the lasagnas are nicely browned, about 20 minutes.
6. Let cool in the pan for about 5 minutes, then run a knife around the edges and remove from pan.

Click here for printable recipe

Macaroni and Cheese Cupcakes

Okay, so ever since I made those French Toast Muffins a little ways back, I've been strangely obsessed with things I can make in my muffin pan. I don't know if it is the whole portability thing, or just the fact that anything with the word "cupcake" or "muffin" in the title automatically makes my stomach growl. You could probably show me a recipe for Brussel Sprout Cupcakes and I would get hungry.

Okay, maybe not.

But in the case of these macaroni and cheese cupcakes, the second it occurred to me that macaroni and cheese could be made in a cupcake shape, I couldn't make the dang things fast enough. And as it turns out, there are a few folks out there that share this little fascination of mine because as soon as I posted on my Facebook page that I was making these for dinner (as I do every day, but that is a discussion for another day) I started getting the comments and emails. So this little recipe moved right up to the head of the line in terms of blog postings, because far be it from me not to share the cupcake love around.

One essential hint for you. Do NOT skip the step that calls for lining your muffin pan with cupcake liners. These guys are just a little bit sticky, and if I hadn't used the liners I fear that half the cupcake would have stuck to the muffin pan. And then I would have cried. Real tears. Use those muffin liners, and it wouldn't hurt to even hit them with a quick sprintz of Pam.

Aside from that, this recipe is pretty much as easy as it gets. The mac and cheese is going to look pretty soupy to you when you are ladling it into the muffin tin, but I promise that it is going to firm up into light and delicious cupcakes that hold together just fine.

Last but not least (and then I promise that I am going to zip my lip and get to the recipe), when one of my foodie friends heard I was making these babies, she suggested I make them in mini muffin pans and serve them with a drizzle of truffle oil. Which sounds like a ROCKING good appetizer, right? We were having them for dinner (which sent the teenager into a coma of food happiness) so I stuck with the regular sized muffin tins, but next time I need a creative, easy appetizer? Oh yeah, baby.

Macaroni and Cheese Cupcakes

• 8 ounces elbow macaroni
• 2 cups shredded cheddar cheese, plus a little more for garnish
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup milk
• Salt and pepper

1. Preheat oven to 400. Line a 12 cup muffin tin with paper or foil liners.

1. Cook the macaroni until done. Drain and immediately return to pot.

2. Add cheese and stir briefly until almost melting.

3. Beat eggs into milk, and then pour mixture into macaroni. Mix well.

4. Ladle macaroni mixture into muffins tins, and bake for 20 minutes. Cool slightly before serving.

Click here for printable recipe