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Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Stuffed Shells


I made this yesterday on a whim, and its been taking all my willpower to not eat the leftovers for breakfast, lunch, and dinner today. (Just breakfast. Ha!) Feel free to modify this in any way to fit your family's preferences! I split the recipe and only used the onion and garlic in half the shell filling because my husband doesn't like onions.

What I used:
A box of jumbo shells noodles
Salt (optional)
1 Tbsp olive oil (optional)
16 oz of ricotta (I used whole milk ricotta)
2 eggs
45 oz of Prego pasta sauce
1/4 cup onion, finely chopped (optional)
2 cloves of garlic, minced (optional)
1 Tbsp salted butter
1 lb ground beef
Italian seasonings of your choice to taste (I used the McCormick Italian Herb Seasonings Grinder)
Shredded mozzarella and parmesan cheeses (optional)



1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
2. Bring a large pot of water on the stove to a boil. Throw in that 1 Tbsp salt and olive oil, then pour in the box of jumbo shells noodles. Cook until soft, then drain and set aside.
3. Grab a frying pan and brown the 1lb ground beef. Season to taste with salt/pepper/whatever if desired.
4. Saute garlic and onion in the butter.
5. Mix the 16oz of ricotta, the 2 eggs, the Italian seasonings, and the garlic and onion in a bowl, then add the cooked ground beef and mix well.
6. Pour half the jar of pasta sauce into a casserole dish.
7.Spoon the cheese/beef mixture into the shell noodles one by one and place into the casserole dish.
8. Spoon or pour the rest of the pasta sauce over the shells.
9. Sprinkle with the mozzarella and parmesan cheese.
10. Bake for 30 minutes or until warm.
11. Try to refrain from eating them all in one sitting. Or don't. :D


Chocolate Caramel!

Ok, I've decided to start posting things I'm making in school on here because some of the recipes are to DIE for! And I'm tired of keeping all these yummy recipes cooped up! Today (Valentine's Day <3) we made chocolate caramels. I wasn't sure if I was going to like them, but after they were finished, and I had a to-go box fill to the top with them, I couldn't stop eating them! They were really easy to make and something about them makes me think "Oreos.". So here's the recipe and hopefully you like them just as much as I do!

Chef Rob Hudson's Granny's recipe- Chocolate Caramels (Apparently at our school the head chef's grandma is one heck of a candy maker! Haha!)

3 1/2 cup sugar
1 1/2 light corn syrup
2 Tbsp cocoa
2 cups cream
1 cup butter
1 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla

1. Cook sugar, syrup, cream, salt, and cocoa together until it forms a soft ball in cold water (or until soft ball stage-240°F). They are supposed to be pretty chewy in the end so don't over cook them!
2. Remove from heat and add vanilla and butter.
3. Place in a well buttered pan to cool.
4. Once cool, cut into squares. We put our caramels in the freezer to cool faster, but they were impossible to cut after that because they froze ha! So we just broke it into pieces.

TA-DA! Yummy chocolate caramels :) There's just something so irresistible about chewy, buttery, and Oreo like caramels!