I made Baked Manicotti a long, long time ago, and from what I remember it was good. However, I tried making it again a few weeks ago when I had a friend over, and it was a Big Fat ‘Fail’. We ended up ordering out for pizza instead.
I am very far from perfect when it comes to cooking. I want to dive right in most of the time instead of reading directions fully first. I can’t tell you how many times I have had to change dinner plans because I didn’t have one of the ingredients I needed. So my advice for today is “Read Directions Fully” and make sure you have all ingredients and the right kitchen tools to do the job right before proceeding.
So second times a charm! My Manicotti was Fabulous 🙂
Here’s the recipe I began with:
Recipe Source: allrecipes.com
I followed the recipe’s ingredients and also added about 1 cup of spinach. I used my food processor and chopped it down so it was nice and small, and then I added it to the cheese mixture.
The most fun (no fun at all) part was stuffing the cheese mixture into the manicotti shells. I used a 1 gallon plastic bag, and added the cheese mixture to it. Then I cut a hole in one of the bottom corners of the bag. This allowed me to squeeze the cheese mixture into the pasta. I broke about 4 of the manicotti shells (said a bunch of *!*!?* words), and I ended up with a total of 10 shells. I used (3) 26oz bottles of pasta sauce so the pasta was nice and covered. Cooking time was for 30 minutes and then an additional 10 minutes after I added more mozzarella cheese to the top. This recipe is nice to serve with salad and/or garlic bread.
ENJOY!!
Cooking, Baking, & Photo-taking 