Baked Mac & Cheese -11/13

We have a friend who is a great BBQ caterer.  His name is Franko aka CAPTAIN BBQ!!! He makes a killer Mac & Cheese.  I, Sara,  wouldn't ask for the recipe but I sure do eat wayyy too much of it any time we have him cater an event.  The best part about his Mac & Cheese?  Goldfish crackers on the top.  MMM DELICIOUS!

So I decided to look around the internet for a baked recipe.  I came across Alton Brown's recipe.  It is made with Panko Bread crumbs.  Panko is a Japanese type of light, crisp breadcrumb.  It creates a crunchy crust because it is coarser than most breadcrumbs. 

I liked this recipe because it was simple and thought it would be tasty. The simple part was right, except we did have to look up how to Temper an egg.  Which in case you don't know either: it is when you take the egg and slowly add the warmer ingredients to it until the egg is at the same temperature and that way you don't scramble the egg by adding it in directly to the warm mixture.

We did get to make a Roux which was fun. We did this before for the souffle and it seems a bit much for mac and cheese but it makes us feel fancy.



 

I have to admit...  I do like the taste of onions but I don't like how they make me cry.  I have tried a lot of tricks but it doesn't seem to work.  I have decided that onions are the reason I am a baker cause you don't need them in the sweet stuff.



This is the onions, paprika, creams and everything mixed together. Doesn't look to yummy, does it?

All in all the ingredients went together quite easily.  When it came out of the oven it smelled good but a little oniony.  I think, next time we will need to use a milder onion and a variety of cheese to mix it up a bit.

Also, we were going to Disneyland immediately after this to see the Christmas decorations and maybe we were thinking a little too much about that. Our photography most evidently suffered. The mac and cheese was called "fabulous" by our friend Annie but we think that was because she got a free meal out of it. Anyway, we promise no more photos without flash. Don't know what got into us.

Lessons learned:  More Cheese = Better Mac N Cheese?  Who knows?  We will have to try again.  Might have to just change it up and go with Gold Fish Crackers.