Lasagna Cups

I felt like making Italian food for my dad tonight. Mom and I decided to make the Lasagna Cups recipe that I saw a couple of months ago on BuzzFeed. (Thanks RoseEllen!)

Ingredients:

• 1/2 onion
• 3 cloves garlic
• 1 pound Italian sausage (or ground beef)
• 2 cups tomato sauce
• 1 cup ricotta
• 1/2 cup (or so) shredded parmesan cheese
• 1/2 teaspoon pepper
• 8 ounces provolone (or mozzarella) 
• Sprigs fresh basil
• Optional - Handful fresh spinach

Instructions:

1. Cook the lasagna noodles. Spray wells of a 12 cup muffin pan with cooking spray.
   (We found greasing the pans made the noodles very slippery.)
2. Cook onion, meat, and garlic for 5 minutes or so. (Drain fat, also sop up with paper towels.)
3. Add tomato sauce + oregano, basil, fennel, salt, pepper to taste.
4. Simmer sauce for at least 10 minutes to thicken.
5. Mix ricotta, parmesan, basil.
6. Drain and cool noodles. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
7. Slice 6 noodles in half for cup walls.
8. Cut 2.5 circles out of rest of noodles. (You might want slightly smaller ones for the bottom.)
9. Wrap a long noodle slice around inside of muffin pan. (The ends will overlap - I cut off 4 inches or so and still had good overlap.)
10. Place a circle noodle in the bottom. (The noodles may be squiggly - be patient!)
11. Place about 1 ounce of ricotta mix in each well. (Optional: then sprinkle with a little provolone)
12. Place another pasta circle on top.
13. Place round tablespoon meat sauce on top. (Optional:  then sprinkle with a little provolone)
14. Optional - Place another pasta circle on top. (We skipped the top pasta circle.)
15. Sprinkle with with provolone. Top with a little shredded basil.

16. Bake at 350 for 15 to 20 minutes.
    

Carole's Notes:

These were cute - but ...
 
The noodles are hard to stuff into the muffin tins.The lasagna cups were tasty, but not very saucy. If you like your lasagna with ricotta layer, sauce, noodles, meat & sauce layer, noodles, ... you may want extra tomato sauce on the side.

They do help with portion control.
  
We had leftover everything - so I made a small lasagna casserole as well.



I might try the wonton cup version next time - it may allow a saucier lasagna.

Barely adapted from from https://www.facebook.com/BuzzFeedFood/videos/1202951403051417/