Hidden Veg Mac and Cheese.

Now I know this is not a new concept, but it’s one of the twins’ favourites so I thought I’d better share our Hidden Veg Mac and Cheese recipe with you all.

Yes it’s another pasta dish (Check out a weekly staple in our house: Pumpkin and Passata Pasta Sauce), I wish I could share all my other different experiments with you. Unfortunately though, Norah hasn’t been too keen on anything new. Her list is slowly growing; we now have a few different varieties of soup and some pasta and noodle dishes she’ll eat. Cole loved a meatball dish with a tomato and veg sauce I made a couple of weeks ago. I’ll try and tweak it a bit and hopefully get the tick of approval from Norah too.

The Hidden Veg:

The hidden veg in this Hidden Veg Mac and Cheese is cauliflower, pumpkin and avocado. Next time I make it I’m going to try and add some spinach too. If I slowly change it, maybe she won’t notice…. or I’ll ruin one of her favourite meals and have to cross another one off the list. Time will tell.

Cheese.

Normally in the meals and desserts I make for the twins I try and stick with healthy fats; oils, nuts, seeds, avocado and coconut. This recipe does have cheese and cream cheese in it. At this point if she’s eating it in moderation and with all the platter style foods she’s loving for lunches, I don’t mind too much.

Roast the Pumpkin.

I roast the pumpkin in the dish, like most of my other dinner recipes that use pumpkin. It makes the total time for cooking this meal a little longer than if you were to just boil it up. But once you’ve put it in the oven you don’t really have to worry about it. And I think the overall taste is much nicer with roasted pumpkin.

Blitz it up.

I use a stick blender to blitz up this Hidden Veg Mac and Cheese sauce. The vegetables are really soft, so it’s super easy. Plus it makes less dishes than if I was to pour it all into the food processor. If you blitz the cauliflower with the butter while the pumpkin is still cooking, it all comes together nice and smooth.

Pick a Pasta.

Use whichever pasta you or your children prefer. Being called Hidden Veg Mac and Cheese, it seems obvious that I would serve it up with macaroni. Sometimes though Norah prefers to suck up some long spaghetti so I’ll also use that with this sauce too. Another CF Mum shared a ‘pulse pasta’ with me quite awhile ago.  This is made with the flour from peas, lentils, chickpeas and borlotti beans. I’ve only just gone out and bought it, so it’ll be interesting to see if Norah will be as eager to eat that as she is with normal pasta.

Empty Bowls!

When the kiddos hand you an empty bowl after a meal, you know you’ve found a winner. I hope your kiddos will love this one just as much.

Print

Hidden Veg Mac and Cheese

Delicious Mac and Cheese with hidden pumpkin, cauliflower and Avocado!

Course Dinner

Keyword Avocado, Pasta, Pumpkin

Prep Time 15 minutes

Cook Time 50 minutes

Total Time 1 hour 5 minutes

Servings 10

Ingredients

• 1/2 cauliflower
• 1/2 butternut pumpkin
• 160 g avocado 33.9g of fat
• 2 tbsp Extra Virgin Olive Oil 36.6g of fat
• 70 g cream cheese 23.9g of fat
• 100 g butter 82g of fat
• 100 g cheddar cheese 33.7g of fat

Instructions

1. Pre heat the oven to 180℃

2. Chop and peel the pumpkin into chunks and place it onto a lined baking tray.

3. Drizzle the pumpkin with the Extra Virgin Olive Oil and roast in the oven until soft (approximately 40mins).  Make sure to turn the pumpkin over at least once to stop it from burning.

4. While the pumpkin is cooking, cut the cauliflower into about 8-10 pieces.  Place in a small pot of water and boil until soft (approximately 20 mins).

5. When the cauliflower is cooked, drain it and put the cauliflower back into the pot you cooked it in.

6. Add the butter to the cauliflower and blitz it with a stick blender until smooth.

7. Once the pumpkin is cooked, add that to the puree cauliflower making sure to tip all the oil in with it.

8. Scoop out the avocado flesh and add that to the pot along with the cheese and cream cheese.

9. Blitz until smooth.

10. Cook pasta following package instructions. 

11. Mix the pasta and the sauce together before serving.

12. You can freeze the pasta sauce in small portions and just cook the pasta as needed.

Recipe Notes

Total fat content: approximately 210.1g of fat

10 serves at 21g of fat per serve.

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