Homemade Macaroni and Cheese

I absolutely love love love my mom's homemade macaroni and cheese. So much that in the three years that my husband and I have been together, he didn't get to try it until after we were married. When my mom would make it and have left overs, she would give me the left overs to take to work for lunch and I am so greedy with her mac and cheese that my husband just never had a chance to try it.

Well, New Year's Day 2013 I decided to go over to my mom's for her to walk me through how to make her mac and cheese. She had to walk me through it because she didn't really have a recipe, she just eyeballed things. She goes "oh I measure by a handful." Umm...mom, my hands are significantly smaller than yours. Your handful and my handful are completely different. She poured the noodles in her hand like she normally would and then put them in a measuring cup so we could figure out how much she used. And now...we have a written recipe. :)

Ingredients:
About 2.5 cups elbow pasta
About 1 brick to a brick and a half of sharp cheddar cheese - shredded
French's Cheddar Fried Onions. Yes, cheddar, not original, but you can use what you prefer I guess. :P
2 Tablespoons butter, divided
Milk
Pepper

Directions:
First, cook your pasta. Salt the water. If you don't, your mac and cheese just won't taste as good as mom's. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F.

In an 8x8 casserole dish, layer about half the pasta to the bottom, add a generous amount of pepper, we lightly covered the whole pasta layer, but add it to your personal liking. Slice 1 Tablespoon of butter into 5 pieces. Put one piece in each corner and one in the center of the dish. Next, layer on half of the cheese. Repeat. For the milk there's no way to judge the amount. Stick a knife down the side of the pan and wiggle it a little to get a spot where you can pour the milk in. You don't want a whole lot, just enough for the milk to spread across all of the bottom of the pan. After adding a little milk, it'll disappear as it spreads to the rest of the pan. When you can just see the milk by your knife and it no longer spreads, that's enough.

Cover with foil and bake for about 20 minutes. Remove the foil, add the fried onions to your liking (we covered the whole top) and bake, uncovered, for an additional 15 minutes.

If you prepare this the night before and bake it from the fridge instead of room temp/just prepared, bake it for about 30 minutes covered, then 15 uncovered. Basically, once the cheese is nice and melted, browning on the edges and bubbly, it's done.

The next time I make this I will take some pictures of the process so you can see how much pepper and milk we add. Enjoy!!!