Baked Mac & Cheese with Bacon

It's a proven fact that bacon makes everything better. It's also a proven fact that baked macaroni and cheese is one of the most delicious, go-to home-cooked meals ever. Combine these two - and you get home-cooked comfort food with delicious bacon goodness. I had a dinner date with my sister last night and baked mac and cheese with bacon was just what the doctor ordered!

I got the recipe for this meal here and followed it nearly exactly.

What you need:

• 1 (8 ounce) package macaroni (I used elbow macaroni, but penne would work as well)
• 4 tablespoons butter
• 4 tablespoons flour
• 1 cup milk
• 1 cup cream
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• fresh ground black pepper, to taste
• 2 cups cheddar cheese, shredded good quality
• 1/2 cup breadcrumbs, buttered

**I used 3/4 cup cream and 1 1/4 cup milk simply because I didn't have enough cream. Still had a great consistency!

**I added 5 slices of bacon, which I cooked as usual and then crumbled into bite size pieces.

This recipe calls for you to cook the macaroni as directed; while the water for the macaroni was heating up, I began to cook the bacon, then crumbled and set to the side. I melted the butter and added the flour as directed, then mixed in the cream and milk (which you unfortunately do need to stir constantly). As the recipe calls for, you then bring the mixture to a boil, continue to stir for 1 minutes, then lower the heat and stir constantly for 10 minutes (I will confess I only stirred constantly for 6 minutes - I was hungry! It still came out great, so 6 minutes is fine). Then I added in the cheese a little bit at a time (I may have used slightly more than 2 cups - I love cheese) until it melted. To complete the pre-baking process, I stirred in the macaroni and bacon until it became one nice cheesy, macaroni mixture. I poured it all into a buttered up deep casserole dish, sprinkled breadcrumbs on top, and tossed it in the oven for 20 minutes at 400 degrees F. Keep an eye on it while it's in the oven so you can get it to be the perfect golden brown. Voila! All finished!

I'm very happy with my decision to include bacon - bacon makes everything better. Next time I may add peas as well to change it up a little. This meal took about 45 minutes to make, including prep.