Recipe Review: Gluten-Free Pumpkin Mac n’ Cheese

Because it’s the middle of the week, and we all need a little fun to get us over the hump, let’s talk about food. Steph has been oohing and aahing over pumpkin mac n’ cheese for ages, so when I visited for the (in)RL conference she was all, “Let’s make pumpkin mac n’ cheese,” and I was all, “Let’s! And I’m going to eat an entire bag of chips while you do it!”

She did the cooking, I did the eating and picture taking.

Including pictures like this.

Hello, baby! You’re so pretty! 

Her hubby did the grass-cutting.

It was a fair distribution of labor.

So to make a long story short, Steph first stumbled across pumpkin mac n’ cheese from this butternut squash mac n’ cheese recipe by Angela at Oh She Glows. Angela is vegan, and she is incredible chef. In-credible. Steph and I are not vegan, and we each consider cheese a regular part of our diet. Also while we love us some butternut squash, canned pumpkin is even easier. Hence, Steph’s pumpkin mac n’ cheese… a recipe based on Angela’s recipe, but with some twists to make it easier and cheesier for us.

The Ingredients We Used

1 can of pumpkin
Olive oil, salt, pepper
1 tbsp organic butter
3/4 cup coconut milk (you can also use regular milk)
1 tbsp brown rice flour (you can use any gluten-free flour)
2 tsp Dijon mustard
3/4 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp onion powder
1/2 tbsp fresh lemon juice
1/2-1 tsp kosher salt (to taste) & ground black pepper, to taste
1 box Annie’s gluten-free macaroni and cheese (Trader Joe’s also makes a killer gluten-free mac n’ cheese for even less)
1 bag frozen organic peas

How We Did It

1. Boil water and begin to cook the macaroni noodles according to the box. You can add a drop of olive oil to them to keep them from sticking together.

2. While the noodles are boiling, add the pumpkin, butter, cheese powder packet from mac n’ cheese box, milk, flour, dijon mustard, garlic, lemon juice, and salt and pepper to a small pot, whisk well and cook over low heat until it thickens into a cheese sauce

3. Drain the macaroni noodles once they’re cooked and transfer back to pot. Pour the cheese sauce over the noodles and stir.

4. Stir in frozen peas to taste.

Ta-da! The verdict: it was delicious. Steph said it turns out even better with Trader Joe’s gluten-free mac n’ cheese, and she also prefers spinach to peas. As a first time taster, I was easy to please and will definitely make this again!

P.S. For anyone looking to lend a hand in the disaster recovery in Oklahoma, Samaritan’s Purse is taking donations of any size and has a disaster relief team on site right now. Also, First Response Team of America is a great organization my friend Karyn told me about. They’re on the ground right now as well using state of the art equipment to help those who have been affected by the tornados.