One of our readers, Tina (she shared her hash brown secrets before), sent in a fantastic tip that I just had to try out and then share with you. She said that she loves to eat Au Gratin or Scalloped potatoes but doesn’t like the extremely long cooking time. Her solution was to use a jumbo muffin tin to cook individual portions. I love how easy it was and now I am thinking of other things I can bake in cute, individual portions. Let me share my recipe with you. “Recipe” being a very loose term here since I pretty much made it up as I went along.

Ingredients: gold potatoes, sweet onion, salt, pepper, cheese (2-3 types), heavy whipping cream

First, spray your muffin tin thoroughly with Pam no-stick cooking spray or grease with butter.  It’s all up to you!  Then, thinly slice the potatoes, hopefully without cutting yourself in the process.

Put your potatoes in a pot of water to parboil them.  I love to say that I parboil things. It seems so professional to me for some reason.  Anyway, while your potatoes are parboiling, grate your cheese (and not your knuckles!).  If you are making these during the week, you can save time by shopping the selection of shredded cheese varieties available at the store, but I wanted to try some fancy cheeses for mine.  For this recipe, I used Jarlsberg, Fontina and Parmigiano-Reggiano.  Personally, I could just eat the bowl of cheese and be happy but that is my issue, not yours.

Now, here comes the bad part — cutting the onions.  I have a really hard time with onions.  To make it easier on myself, I use one of those food choppers to dice them up.  By now, your potatoes should be ready.  Drain them and get out your tongs.  These babies are hot and you don’t want to burn your fingers in the next step.  If you haven’t guessed by now, I tend to injure myself in some fashion every time I cook.  It seems to be genetic.  My mom can’t bake something without burning herself.

Now is the easy part.  Layer your potatoes (using the tongs), the onions, salt, pepper and cheese into each of the cups.  I only used the mixture of Jarlsberg and Fontina at this time.  I managed to get three layers into my cups and I did smush them down a little bit with the base of a glass.

Once you have all your layers, pour some heavy cream into each cup.  Try not to be as messy as I was.  I was trying to take a picture of me actually pouring the cream and it didn’t work out so well.  Finish it off with a layer of your Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese.

Now pop them into your oven at 350 degrees F for about 30-40 minutes until they get all golden brown and bubbly.  Scoop one portion onto each plate and enjoy!