Cake Pan Layered Enchilada Bake (2024)

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by Sandyon Jul 17, 2022

Easy Cake Pan Layered Enchilada Bake recipe takes less than an hour to get on the table with your favorite toppings! Use a 9×13 cake pan!

A Cake Pan Layered Enchilada Bake is the easiest and cheesiest enchilada bake made in a simple cake pan. Layer the ingredients, bake and serve! Mix up the ingredients to add your favorites for the flavor you want.

Why we love this Cake Pan Layered Enchilada Bake

Friends, we love this easy Layered Enchilada Bake dinner because it only dirties one dish! It’s also a good “garden dump” dish because you can layer in extra veggies, beans, etc. Just make sure you have enough salsa to make it moist. And of course, the more cheese the better.

This is the best weeknight dinner with easy ingredients to keep on hand.

Cake Pan Layered Enchilada Bake

• Great flavor: Every time I serve this dish, I get rave reviews—especially from my family who loves Mexican-inspired food. Plus, it smells delicious while baking.
• Easy sauce: Instead of store-bought enchilada sauce, we use salsa. And of course, making your own salsa is even better. Grab my Smokey Zucchini Salsa recipe if you love to can.
• Time saver: We love enchiladas, but this recipe is a great time-saver because it uses similar ingredients, but you don’t have to take the time to roll the enchiladas.
• Cake pan: Everyone has a cake pan, or you can buy a foil 9×13 cake pan in the grocery store.
• Make ahead: Make this dish ahead and freeze (details below).

More enchilada recipes to try:

Two recipes that have been on my blog for some time is this Overnight Breakfast Sausage Enchiladas and Green Enchilada Chicken Bake Casserole. Also, this Easy Tortilla Chicken Pie is super popular! For smaller bites, try these Mini Chicken Enchilada Cups.

Enchilada Bake Ingredients:

• Ground turkey
• Onion
• Salsa
• Black beans + kidney beans
• Tortillas
• Sour Cream
• Mexican shredded cheese
• Lettuce
• Cherry tomatoes
• Cilantro

How to make a Cake Pan Layered Enchilada Bake:

1. Heat the oven to 400.
2. Brown the meat with onions and drain. Drain the beans.
3. Stir in the salsa and beans into the meat mixture.
4. Wrap the 12 tortillas in a wet paper towel and microwave for 2 minutes until hot and soft.
5. Spray the bottom of a 9×13 pan. Lay 4 tortillas on the bottom of the pan (they will be overlapping).
6. Cover with the meat mixture, sprinkle with cheese. Layer with 4 more tortillas.
7. Spread sour cream over the tortillas and repeat the method above (tortillas, sour cream, meat mixture, cheese), ending with cheese on the very top.
8. Cover with foil and bake until casserole is heated through.
9. Let stand 5 minutes before serving.
10. Garnish with shredded lettuce, tomatoes, and cilantro.
11. Serve with Tobasco sauce. YUM!

Buying ingredients ahead:

One thing I learned from my mom was to always keep Mexican Food ingredients on hand.

For example, here are the items I had for the recipe today, and how I store these items:

• Ground turkey – buy the “2 pack” of ground turkey from Costco and freeze in 1 lb. increments.
• Onions – my large basket in the pantry is always full of onions, sweet potatoes, and russet potatoes.
• Salsa – buy Costco’s 2-pack Organic Salsa.
• Tabasco sauce – always keep a few bottles on hand.
• Beans – keep an abundance of different varieties of beans in the pantry.
• Corn tortillas – you can buy the large packs at Costco for just dollars and freeze what you don’t use (plus these are gluten-free).
• Cheese – purchase cheese in bulk from Costco and separate it into Ziploc bags and freeze.
• Fresh ingredients — I was lucky to have iceberg lettuce, cherry tomatoes, cilantro, and sour cream stocked in my refrigerator.

Make ahead and freeze:

Grab your cake pan!This dish is easy to make ahead and freeze, minus the lettuce and fresh toppings.

1. Line 13×9-inch baking dish with foil, and make sure the ends of foil extend over the sides of the dish. Follow directions to assemble recipe in the prepared dish.
2. Cover with additional foil. Freeze up to 3 months. When ready to serve, bake casserole (covered) in 400ºF oven 1 hour. Remove foil. Bake an additional 15 to 20 min. or until casserole is heated through and cheese is melted. Let stand 5 min. before cutting to serve.

Here’s how to decrease the baking time:

1. Thaw frozen casserole in refrigerator overnight, then bake, uncovered, 45 min. or until casserole is heated through and cheese is melted.
2. After baked, proceed with all the delicious fresh toppings.

Tips and Substitutions:

• Replace the ground turkey with 2 cooked chopped chicken breasts. If you do this, I add about 1/2 cup of extra salsa to the meat mixture.
• Add black olives.
• Swap out the beans for your favorite beans (pinto, white beans, etc:)
• Optioinal to add rice (but you will need to increase the salsa/sauce).
• Optional to replace the 3 cups of salsa with enchilada sauce.

The more cheese, the better!

At Thanksgiving time, we always make turkey enchiladas the Friday after, or you can try this Pumpkin Enchilada Bake Recipe.

Enjoy this week! Having a meal plan sure makes cooking dinner much easier. Also being prepared for dinner gives me a much better attitude about cooking, when I know what’s going to be served that night.

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published on Jul 17, 2022

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