Easy Baked Mac & Cheese

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

1. Put the pasta into the baking pan & spread it out evenly
2. Next, the cheddar cheese is scattered evenly over the pasta
3. 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…
4. Pour this mixture all over the cheese in the pan
5. Now make the topping… melt the butter & mix it with the Parmesan & bread crumbs mixing well so that all of the crumbs are wel
6. Put this crumb mixture over the entire top of the mixture in the baking pan
7. Put into the preheated oven
8. Bake for 20 minutes
9. Increase the oven temp to 450f
10. 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
11. Rest this for at least 10 minutes before serving!

This is so good!

Enjoy!