Bats and Cobwebs Baked Pasta Recipe (2024)

We’re all going to eat dinner, so why not make it fun? Life with my boys is never dull. When it comes to dinnertime, it can be a battle with their picky little palates. So with Halloween around the corner, I thought it would be fun to infuse our dinner with a fun and easy baked pasta recipe that had us thinking about bats and cobwebs.

I had a box of bowtie pasta in my cupboard and decided to make it creative. My boys who are six and three have the most vivid imaginations and I knew they would love the idea of this dinner. Don’t you ever wish you could have the imagination of a kid? It’s amazing what they come up with. Anyways, with just a few simple ingredients I was able to make dinner come alive with a Taste of Italy to boot.

I headed to Kroger to find a Tuscan inspired sauce. I figured if the boys get bats in their dinner, I want Italy. I decided on a 24 oz jar of Bertollias part of Kroger’s Taste of Italy program and also grabbedsome mozzarella cheese. I am picky about pasta sauces. Pasta dishes can be boring. However, with the right sauce, they come alive with very little effort by this mama.

Here’s what you’ll need to make bats and cobwebs:

8 oz package of bowtie bat pasta
1 pound ground beef
24 oz jar of Bertolli Pasta Sauce
1 small onion, chopped
2 cloves of garlic, chopped
8 oz of mozaarella cheese
1/4 cup of shredded parmesan cheese

In a sauce pan, add the onion, garlic and ground beef and cook until the ground beef is no longer pink. While this is cooking, it’s a great time to boil your water to cook the bats.

Once the ground beef is fully cooked, drain it and add the Bertolli Pasta Sauce. Let it simmer until you’re ready to add it to the pasta. I used their Olive Oil and Garlic pasta sauce. I know I added garlic already, but this girl LOVEs garlic and it makes me feel like I’m all Italian when I eat it. Plus, my house smells awesome.

In a large pot, add the fully cook pasta, sauce mixture and half of the mozzarella.

Mix it well until the cheese just starts to melt. Did you catch the steam in the picture above. (I was pretty excited my camera caught that.) The mixture is already hot, so the cheese will start to melt and you will be tempted to eat it by the spoonfull – but control yourself. You want to have cobwebs with your bats.

Put the mixture into a large 9×13 pan that has been sprayed with cooking spray. Add the other half of the mozzarella and the parmesan.

Bake in a preheated 400 degree oven for 12 to 15 minutes. Everything is already cooked, you just want to make sure the cheese fully melts. Oh, it smells so good!

Grab a fork and serve it hot so that the kids can watch the cobwebs come alive out of the pan as you serve them the bats. And of course, enjoy your bats and cobwebs. I think the next time I’ll try this Tomato and Basil pasta. Either way the bats and cobwebs were a big hit and filled the little tummies of my kids. We’ll definitely be making this again this month!