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Anytime I have tried to make a home made baked macaroni and cheese recipe I have always failed miserably. I don’t know if I have just found bad recipes or if it was something I did but they never turn out. The last one I tried was a couple of years ago and being as my son loves the boxed macaroni and cheese I thought I would find another recipe to try out and hopefully succeed at. This one in particular caught my eye because there a few of the ingredients in it I have not seen in a macaroni and cheese recipe before.

INGREDIENTS

• 1 (8 ounce) package elbow macaroni
• 1 (8 ounce) package shredded sharp Cheddar cheese
• 1 (12 ounce) container small curd cottage cheese
• 1 (8 ounce) container sour cream
• 1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
• salt and pepper to taste
• 1 cup dry bread crumbs
• 1/4 cup butter, melted

DIRECTIONS

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Bring a large pot of lightly salted water to a boil, add pasta, and cook until done; drain.
• In 9×13 inch baking dish, stir together macaroni, shredded Cheddar cheese, cottage cheese, sour cream, Parmesan cheese, salt and pepper. In a small bowl, mix together bread crumbs and melted butter. Sprinkle topping over macaroni mixture.
• Bake 30 to 35 minutes, or until top is golden.

For this easy to make Mac & Cheese recipe go here

Recipe Alterations

One of the things that I changed in this recipe was the amount of some of the ingredients and thats just because I live in Canada where the amounts on packages are in metric and I was too lazy to go downstairs to my computer to double check what the conversions were.

1. I added almost double the macaroni, because I did not feel that the there was enough.
2. Added more sour cream and cottage cheese. Not a lot more but like I said I was guessing at the correct amounts
3. The only cheese I had on hand was marble so thats what I used. Next time for sure I will be using a sharp cheddar (should add a cheesier taste overall to the dish)
4. I used cornflake crumbs instead of bread crumbs because I personally like the flavour better
5. I baked it longer than called for to try and melt the cottage cheese a bit more

Family Taste Test

Surprisingly enough with the amount of cheese in this recipe my son still did not eat it up the way I thought he would. He seemed to like it but he didn’t even finish what was on his plate. My husband and myself both liked it but found it to be a bit bland tasting. I think it definitely has the potential to be quite good mac & cheese recipe but it still needs a few tweaks to get it to suit our tastes.

My Thoughts

Since I baked it in the oven longer than called for I made sure boil the macaroni until it was just cooked but it still ended up being a bit soggier than we like. Next time I will pull the macaroni off the stove even sooner.

There will be a few things that we would do differently next time we make this to make it even more appealing to us.

• One of them would be to maybe add a second grated cheese with a strong flavor, swiss maybe?
• I didn’t find the topping to be enough, I would add enough to evenly cover the whole top
• Also add some spices to it to up the flavor some. I enjoy the taste that mustard powder adds to baked macaroni and cheese and other than that maybe just more salt and pepper than I added the first time

I found that this recipe made a huge amount of macaroni and cheese, I have had it for lunch two days in a row and there is still lots left. Yes I know I said I added more macaroni but for the amount of everything else I thought I better or it would end up being more of a soup. Either way next time I would cut the recipe in half. All in all though this is a good basic recipe that can be fiddled with to suit your own individual tastes.

Filed under: Side Dish