Ricotta and spinach Cannelloni for kids

A traditional pasta recipe for your Christmas menu’: spinach and ricotta cannelloni with a festive touch for the kids 🙂
This recipe came out very fun and very yummy. My little Luca loved the Xmas tree shape and the small size of the cannelloni, perfect bite size for him 🙂
the tasty stuffing and the creamy Bechamel sauce did the rest!
You can prepare this recipe in advance, the day before and bake it the day of the party. Let’s start together with the ingredients:

I boiled my spinach for 5 minutes and drained them. In a pan, on medium heat, I added oil and garlic.

After one minute I added my spinach,  a pinch of salt and let it cook for 5 minutes

While the spinach was cooling down I prepared the Bechamel sauce. In a medium pan I melted the butter at low heat

added the flour and worked the flour and the butter with a wisk obtaining a nice and thick cream

I slowly added the milk and kept wisking for 5/8 minutes, up until a nice light cream was formed

Last optional (not for me) touch: the nutmeg. A pinch (or if you are nutmeg addicted like me…more than a pinch)

Let’s go back to the spinach and place it in a mixer with the ricotta, the parmesan cheese, the ham and another good pinch of nutmeg.

Let’s mix everything

We are ready for our cannelloni pasta. Being Christmas and being this recipe for kids, I played with the shapes: a Xmas tree container and tiny tiny cannelloni.

The procedure is exactly the same if you want to use a normal square or rectangular shape container (oven safe) and a regular size cannelloni. Let’s place a nice layer of Bechamel sauce at the bottom.

Place our cannelloni in the little Christmas tree and with a piping bag (or a plastic ziploc) fill the cannelloni with the spinach and ricotta mix.

 

Add another layer of Bechamel sauce on top and a generous sprinkle of Parmesan cheese

Cover with aluminum foil

Bake in the oven covered at 400 for 15 min, uncovered at 350 for 5 min and broil uncovered for 5 min.

 

Ready!!! My little Luca loved them and I hope you and your family are going to do the same!

ciao!!

b