Cooks Joy » Lasagna cups and Mini Lasagna with Vegetables

Lasagna cups and Mini Lasagna with Vegetables

Posted By Vardhini On May 22, 2011 @ 6:06 am In Baking,Blogging Marathon,Eggless,Gallery,Healthy Recipes,Italian,Kid Friendly,Main Dish | 49 Comments

Final day of the blogging marathon “Kid’s Delight” series and I am back with yet another of my son’s favorite “Lasagna”. This is a healthy lasagna with loads of vegetables, minimal cheese and is a joint venture of K and me. What is Lasagna? It is nothing but a flat pasta which is layered between cheese, sauce and vegetables or meat. I decided on Lasagna but wanted to do something different and hence the cup version was born. To be frank I was shivering in the knees until I saw the end product. I even had the backup mini lasagna just in case .. you know what I mean . But all was well and my son enjoyed it thoroughly and the lasagna cups will be on the menu when cooking for kids particularly. So a big thanks goes to K for helping out with this multi-step recipe and for taking pictures while I had my hands dirty trying to assemble the layers.Bear with me friends because this is a long post with lots of pictures as I fell too much in love with the recipe that I absolutely could not skip any step. Keep reading and you will know why Don’t forget to check out the tips section for variations and for making regular lasagna instead of the mini version.

Ingredients
Few strips lasagna (each cup takes one strip of lasagna)
2 tsp olive oil

3 cups mushrooms sliced
3 zucchinis diced

1 packet frozen spinach (16 oz)
1 carrot grated

Cheese (use as much or as little)

Tomato sauce – I used store bought Prego Sauce (quantity varies depending on layers)

Paneer (Indian cottage cheese and is optional)

Salt to taste

Pepper to tasteMethod

First get the lasagna noodles going. Boil a pot of water and cook lasagna according to package instructions.

Lets get the vegetables going simultaneously. Heat a little olive oil and add the mushrooms. Saute until they shrink to almost half the size. Add salt and pepper to taste. Remove from pan.

Repeat the same for zucchini. Saute, add salt and pepper and remove from pan.

Next goes the spinach.

Once we have all the vegetables ready we can start assembling the layers or in this case cups. For the cups cut each pasta strip into 2.

Take a muffin pan and grease with spray and place the half strip in the bottom of the muffin cup.

Next we want to form a cup. So slice the other half of the strip vertically and place along the muffin cup sides as shown in the collage thus forming a cup. Next comes the layers. There is no hard and fast rule here. Just use your imagination.

First it is pasta cup. Then I placed mushroom followed by a little cheese. Next went the spinach followed by a little paneer for a change. Then sauce followed by zucchini. Next top it with some cheese. For a little color I added grated carrots. Phew .. have I confused you’ll enough yet.

To make it simple it is normally pasta, vegetable, sauce and cheese. You get the idea right.

I have to say that I just love this collage. Don’t you’ll

Place in a preheated 375F oven until cheese melts since everything else is already cooked. The cups look adorable right.

Cheese has melted and time for the finish. I would suggest closing the pan with foil since the top of the cups dried out a bit. I am pretty excited at this point and so was my son. How cute does that look? The cups were all gone in the next few minutes

I ended up with extra strips or should I say that it was part of my backup !!. Anyway we used it up by layering in a 5.8 cup boroseal glass container from LocknLock. The container was deep enough for layers and was a perfect size for 2 servings or cut the layers for a single serving. This is a neat lunch box idea too. Bake and refrigerate for lunch the next day

. I have to mention that it is leak proof and made of glass making it even more ideal for lunch.

So here goes the pictures for the layering. So it is pasta, spinach, sauce and paneer first.

Next layer pasta, mushrooms, cheese and sauce. No fixed order for this recipe.

Again pasta, zucchini, grated carrots and cheese. Are we done yet?

Can you’ll see the layers? It looks yummy right.

Phew .. finally into the oven at 375F until cheese melts. Place in broil finally for the cheese to brown nicely. Just writing this post makes me hungry.

So here I have saved a piece for you’ll to have. Yum yum .. Kids enjoyed the cups and we enjoyed the mini version. I should say the mini version was totally moist and I did not miss the loads of cheese at all.

Healthy vegetable lasagna ready.

Enjoy!

Interested in the cute leak proof glass container?

Lock & Lock Glass, Clear Heat Resistant Glass, Rectangular, 5.8-Cup Size, 1.35-Liter

Tips
1. Use any vegetable of choice and layer as needed. No rule here.
2. Mix ricotta cheese and spinach and use this to layer along with sauce.
3. Eggs can also be scrambled and added along with spinach.
4. If making a regular lasagna use a 9×13 pan and layer the full strips and add toppings as needed.

Sending the Lasagna to the following events.
Herbs and flowers-Mushrooms hosted by RS originally started by PJ.
Fruit/Veggie of the month – Spinach hosted by Reshmi originally started by Priya.

Check out the Blogging Marathoners doing BM#5 along with me
Curry in a hurry under 30 min: Priya Suresh, Srivalli, Usha
Seven Days of Colorful Dishes Kid’s Special: Vardhini,
Seven Days of Indian Sweets: Harini, Suma, Veena
Seven Days of Regional Specials: Aarthi, Kalyani, Pavani, Shylaja
Summer Coolers: PJ, Vaishali
Under 15 mins Quick Breakfast: Sushma Pinjala,

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