my baked mac and cheese

I made this the other night because my boyfriend was craving baked mac and cheese. I did not make it vegan however. This is just a meat free recipe.

I made this early in the day and left it in the oven to keep it warm. I knew we were going out for cocktails later that night so I said "hmm, better make this now" as I generally don't like to handle boiling water when I'm drunk. I'm just sayin...

What you will need:

1-Can of Condensed Cheese Soup

Milk

3 cups of shell shaped macaroni

shredded cheese

crutons. I used ranch flavored.

I used two pans to get this done faster, but if you're trying to save dishes, you can easily prepare this in one pan.

Step 1:

Boil your macaroni. I don't boil mine down to exactly to the softness I would like because they will cook more when you bake the dish. I leave my noodles slightly al dente.

Step 2:
Heat the soup on stove. The can of soup I had asked to me to add a can full of milk as well. I've served condensed soup without the milk before and it's just richer. However I wanted to make sure I had enough cheese, so I used the milk this time around. Also if you want to add cheese to melt in the soup, its pretty tasty. I also added butter and garlic to it. Delicious!

Step 3
Strain the noodles and put them in an oven safe pan or pyrex dish.

Step 4:
Take your desired amount of crutons and crush them down. You can also use bread crumbs, but I like the texture of the crutons better.

Step 5:
Pour about half of the cheese soup into the pan with the noodles. Stir around until your noodles are covered.

Step 6:
Add layer of crutons and shredded cheese to the noodle mixture.

Step 7:
Add more of the cheese soup to the pan, making a layer over the crutons and shredded cheese.

Step 8:
Add more crutons and shredded cheese.

Step 9:
Bake in oven at 400 degrees for 20 minutes. Obviously this might change depending on your oven. I cook with gas in pyrex and 400 is perfect.

After 20 minutes, you have a nice cheesy dish, which actually reheats very well. Good comfort food. And since it's all foggy and rainy where I live today, I might be making it again.