I love baked Mac & Cheese but I do not always like the fuss of making a cheese sauce so when I saw this recipe I was so excited to try it!
The recipe is by Melissa Clark and I saw it on The New York Times FROM THE PANTRY ….
I love my Velveeta Mac & Cheese ,,, this recipe makes a delicious creamy mac & cheese which will be my all time favourite
But… this recipe from Melissa Clark is really easy… everything is layered in a baking dish.. uncooked pasta… cheese ,,,,milk… etc & then it is baked!
This is not a diet recipe but really…. good mac & cheese is worth every bite!!!
I added some sugar to this recipe because I love my mac & cheese a bit sweet but you can omit if you want. Don’t skimp on the salt … You can use any cheese I think, I had cheddar so I used that. An old cheddar would be tasty too. The recipe called for garlic but I omitted that..
I love all of Melissa Clarks recipes that I have tried so if you see some of her recipes they will be worth trying.
Here is the recipe the way I made this dish, based on the original
Ingredients
1 lb macaroni
5 cups of shredded cheddar cheese
4 1/2 cups milk
1 cup cottage cheese ( the recipe says you can use 1 brick of cream cheese or 1 cup ricotta or sour cream) I had cottage cheese in the fridge
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp mustard powder ( optional)
black pepper
1 – 2 tbsp sugar ( yum!) optional of course
pinch of cayenne if you want
Topping
4 tbsp butter
1/2 cup Parmesan
1 1/2 cups bread crumbs
Method
Grease a 9 x 13 baking pan
Preheat oven 425f
- Put the pasta into the baking pan & spread it out evenly
- Next, the cheddar cheese is scattered evenly over the pasta
- You need a blender for this next step… (I tried this the first time in my food processor & it leaked all over the place & made a huge mess. so use a blender…. if you don’t have a blender maybe a hand blender will work but you need a really big bowl to do this in.) *** add the milk, cottage cheese, salt, mustard powder, pepper, sugar & cayenne in the blender, mix until well combined…
- Pour this mixture all over the cheese in the pan
- Now make the topping… melt the butter & mix it with the Parmesan & bread crumbs mixing well so that all of the crumbs are wel
- Put this crumb mixture over the entire top of the mixture in the baking pan
- Put into the preheated oven
- Bake for 20 minutes
- Increase the oven temp to 450f
- Bake for another 20-30 minutes until the top is nice & brown… I baked it for the full 30 minutes because I like the bottom to be nice & crispy
- Rest this for at least 10 minutes before serving!
This is so good!
Enjoy!









Looks beyond delicious! Love the crispy top!