As a mother of a toddler, when I say that I am obsessed with easy, kid-friendly dishes, I am not exaggerating. When I am on the hunt for new recipes, there are 3 things that I hold in very high regard, I need: (1) something my toddler is likely to actually eat, (2) something I can hide some vegetables in, and (3) something that involves minimal work on my part – and ideally equally minimal washing up.

And thus, I’ve fallen across this macaroni cheese recipe. Yep, it ticks all my boxes: my toddler will devour it and I can easily add some frozen chopped vegies in for some added nutrients. But, what I’m most impressed by is its little time-saving sauce hack that I’m embarrassed to admit I haven’t even thought of before. 

Macaroni Cheese

A nifty little sauce hack

This sauce hack is so simple it’s almost ridiculous. Whereas your classic macaroni cheese will require you to cook the sauce and the pasta separately before combining them and baking them in the oven, this recipe skips all of that and makes use of our favourite appliance: the slow cooker.

Basically, you combine all of your dry ingredients into one bowl (I’d argue you could probably put it straight into the slow cooker bowl at this point) and then in another add your chopped butter to the boiling water. Once the butter melts, you simply combine the wet ingredients with the dry ones, and that’s IT! Your slow cooker will take over from there. 

Using my calculations, this means that you will only have 2 dishes (3 if you opt for the separate dry ingredient bowl at the start) to clean including the slow cooker bowl! Tell me that’s not a win?

And you don’t even need to boil up water for your pasta

As a little bonus, I also particularly like that you don’t have to cook the pasta yourself in this recipe. Again, the slow cooker does it all for you. It will never not seem like magic that I can put raw pasta into the slow cooker and it comes out perfectly cooked. It’s just another washing up job saved, if you ask me. 

So, next time you’re looking for a quick and easy side dish, or a dinner to appease the kids, maybe this macaroni cheese recipe is just the thing.