I first pinned this recipe last year sometime. I am always looking for simple and quick recipes for the weekdays. The last thing that I want to do is come home after a long day at work and more than an hour and a half commute home and cook dinner. This is one of the main reasons why I wanted to try freezer meals – I am not in the mood to cook dinner by the time that I get home from work.
So I found this recipe for something called baked ravioli. Shortly after I pinned this recipe, a woman on Youtube named Amy with the handle dreamflight6000 made this video where she made this recipe for a baked ravioli. Now, you have probably read me talk about Amy before on another post – I love her! She is really funny and smart and an excellent mother to her two boys (and pregnant with a third!), and she is a self-proclaimed picky eater. I knew that if she and her family loved this recipe than certainly I could get my hungry albeit sometimes picky kids to eat it.
In my meal plan for the month of Dec-Jan (I decided that I need to do my meal plan for the end of one month and beginning of the next – better for our budgets and my sanity), I decided to try to make this meal. I bought the ingredients and forgot about it. If you follow me on Facebook or talk to me in person then you know that my home has been an acting convalescent home for some time with this crud that we are all passing around. Well, Friday it came to a head with my son. He was feeling awful and whiney, and needing to be held by someone and rocked most of the day. For anyone who has now or who have ever had a toddler, you know those days. I had no idea what I was going to make for dinner. Luckily this recipe came to mind and it ended up being perfect.
Isabella is a busy girl lately. She just turned three, and she is all about helping. I don’t want to stifle that help, because I don’t want her to turn into a sloth or (further) demanding toddler. She is all about wanting to help in the kitchen. I would LOVE to have the storage space for one of those Learning Towers, but alas, this rental that we are in has NO storage space, hence the reason why we had to build shelves to use our coat closet as a second pantry. I will further explain that later. She loves to help me cook, but since we have a gas stove, I am less than excited about the possibility of her doing that, especially since he will want to follow closely behind her and he has no natural apprehension towards fire like she does.
This recipe was awesome for them because it was simple and they were able to help. It honestly is just laying several different pieces together and tossing it in the oven. You could easily make this your own by substituting different kinds of ravioli, or different kinds of pasta sauce, etc. We just used regular cheese ravioli and a traditional pasta sauce. I do fresh grate my cheese always so that was just standard mozzarella from the store. Let me know what substitutions you would do and I will check them out!
Baked Ravioli
Prep time: 5 mins
Cook time: 45 mins
Ingredients:
1 28 oz jar pasta sauce
1 package frozen raviolis (do not thaw)
8 oz grated mozzarella
½ cup Parmesan, to taste
¾ Tbsp Italian seasoning
1 tsp Garlic powder
Instructions:
Grease a 9x13 pan liberally with cooking spray and heat your oven to 400(check) degrees. Spread about ¾ cup pasta sauce in the bottom of the pan. Layer half of the frozen ravioli over the sauce in an even layer. Spoon half of the remaining sauce over the top of the ravioli. Top with half of your mozzarella cheese and half of the Parmesan cheese. Repeat that layer ensuring that you use all sauce and cheese. I sprinkled the top of this with Italian seasoning and garlic powder to give it more flavor. You can certainly omit those if you feel like you get enough flavor from your sauce or pasta, but I felt like it would need a little something. (The picture above is what it looks like right before it goes into the oven. No after picture - sorry we were too busy enjoying!)
Cover with aluminum foil and bake for 30 minutes. Remove foil and bake another 10-15 minutes until cheese is browning and completely melted. Let stand 10-15 minutes after removal from oven before serving to allow the dish to set and the sauce to not be so runny.
Enjoy!
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