If you've never tried real oven baked macaroni, give this recipe a shot. You can adjust the Tabasco and mustard if you like things more or less spicy.
I love the Mac and Cheese recipes cooked in the oven. This recipe is a good balance between easy and tasty. - 26 Oct 2011
I made a recipe and a half of this. Instead of adding more elbow macaroni, I added some sauteed carrot, shredded zucchini, garlic and peppers which I cooked with the onion. (I'm all about sneaking in some veggies where I can. As long as it's covered in cheese, the kids will eat just about anything.) I tried the sauce after adding all the cheese and added about a cup or so more. I took LTH's recommends and used Crackerbarrel's 2% white cheddar, which I found on the cheap at Grocery Outlet. For the topping, I made my own bread crumbs out of day old bread and pulsed it in the blender until it was a fine crumb. Two pieces made just enough. Good sturdy recipe. I always add a little dijon and Frank's hot sauce to my homemade mac, so that is always a nice touch. This is a make again. EDITED: After baking for an hour, the flavors really melded well. I'm glad I made extra because we really ate the heck out of this (even my oldest son had two bowls!) and there's enough for leftovers for lunch tomorrow. It's earned it's last star. AND, it's even better the next day. I warmed it in the microwave and didn't have any issues with gloppy cheese or globs of noodles. - 07 Aug 2009 (Review from Allrecipes USA and Canada)
I admit it--I left out the onions! Just too big a departure for me I guess We liked this. I reduced the overall butter in this recipe to 2 tbsp, which I used to make the roux. It doesn't need the butter anywhere else (though naturally, it TASTES better if you use butter where indicated.) I added some pre-cooked bacon bits in with the topping, and sprayed the topping with Pam, but really it needed a little butter in the topping (and not in the other places!) to moisten the bread crumbs. I'll make this again, we really liked the blend of spices in this one. P.S. If you're having trouble with graininess, make sure you DO NOT BOIL THE CHEESE SAUCE. That creates the graininess. In fact you can turn the heat off at the point where you add the cheeses to melt them, the residual heat will do the job without any risk of boiling. Thanks for the recipe - 22 Oct 2009 (Review from Allrecipes USA and Canada)