For an easy and delicious meal with little cleanup, a sheet pan is your best friend.
When we bake or roast food on a sheet pan, we expose the foods to dry heat. Placed in the center of an oven, the food cooks from bottom to top and from top to bottom. Roasting means we heat a solid piece of food, like a chicken, as opposed to baking a batter, which changes its shape when heated. Whether baking or roasting, we are placing just one sheet pan in the center of the oven and enjoying super-delicious, easy meals as a result.
Single-pan roasting/baking is my new favorite cooking method. The lack of ceremony and technique might seem pedestrian. I say “So what?” I know my friends and family just need good food on a busy Tuesday night, and they don’t want to buy expensive boxed meals that arrives in six layers of bubble wrap and thermal bags. Let’s give the landfill a rest.
There is nothing fussy about tossing things together and putting them in the oven. It’s so easy! The fun in this process is finding new items to add and pair together.
I might be cheating slightly when I call Pumpkin Cream Cheese Breakfast Cake a sheet-pan meal. It’s a blood sugar-spiker and should be served alongside a protein. Eat an egg with a modest square of this dessert-like offering. However, the addition of pureed unsweetened pumpkin and cream cheese takes the sweetness down a notch and makes it incredibly moist. Think of it as a coffee cake or dessert. It would be good served a la mode with pumpkin ice cream. Wow…would it ever!
