Recipe Wednesday Gayle Wigglesworth

Author Gayle Wigglesworth shares her signature recipe. Think cozy. Think a cold winter day, with a good book to look forward to and a dish of fabulous Mac and Cheese bubbling in the oven. This recipe will become a standard for you as it has for everyone who’s tried it. This recipe is right out of my cookbook/family memoir, Gayle’s Legacy. If you like the recipe, check out the book, recently available on Kindle.

Gayle’s Mac and Cheese

If your family and friends think Macaroni and Cheese comes out of the box, they’re in for a surprise. I made this so many times in my younger years that I guess I had stopped making it by the time I joined the Wigglesworth family. Anyway, one day one of us ordered it at a rather posh local restaurant and everyone tried it and then raved about it, so I’ve been making it at home ever since.

Note: Never make just one batch, always make extra for the freezer. Take it from the freezer anytime, put it in a cold oven, add a little milk, and bake for twice as long as the recipe calls for.

What you need:

1 pound elbow macaroni boiled 20 minutes until tender, then drained (Add salt and little oil to the water before boiling)
1 pound of your favorite cheese, approximately 3 cups grated (Dave’s favorite is Vermont Cheddar but feel free to mix cheeses with compatible flavors. In fact, I use 2 cups Vermont Cheddar plus 1 cup Monterey Jack because that’s perfect.)
2 cups low fat sour cream
1/4 cup dried onion flakes
½ cup skim milk (approximate)
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon coarsely ground pepper

How to assemble:

While the macaroni is boiling, grate the cheese
In a large bowl mix the sour cream, milk, cheese, onion and salt and pepper.
When macaroni is drained, add it to the cheese mixture and stir well. (If mixture is dry add more milk)
Pour into baking containers, pre sprayed with Pam.
Bake at 350◦ for 45 to 60 minutes, it should be bubbly and the top brown and crispy.

Hints:

This is good as a main course with a big green salad and a vegetable (feeds 4 to 5) or it goes very well as a side dish with a main course (serves 6 to 7).

If freezing this dish for another day, do it before you bake it.

Notes:

This also can be layered with slices of ham.

My sister Connie pours a large can of stewed tomatoes over the dish after it comes out of the oven and before she serves it. I would be shot if I did that to my family, but I have served stewed tomatoes with it and tried spooning them over my serving. It was delicious.


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Gayle Wigglesworth wrote her cookbook when she moved from California to Texas leaving her family behind. They immediately wailed, “Who is going to cook the family dinners?” She suggested they do it, and wrote this cook book to help them. The first edition was published at Kinko’s but it was such a hit and so many friends wanted copies she brought out a second edition with additional favorite recipes that the first one missed. Now she and her husband go back to California for the holidays and the kids put on the big dinners for them.

Gayle started writing early in life but she wasn’t successful in getting published until after she retired from her senior executive position at a major bank. She now has published five traditional Claire Gulliver Mysteries, featuring a travel book store owner who in her travels somehow becomes embroiled in murder.
Gayle’s books are about normal likeable people who by a quirk of fate get involved in mysteries.



Soon her sixth mystery, Mud to Ashes, will be available. This stand-alone book features a middle aged woman who becomes an empty nester. In order to rebuild a life she moves to a California coastal town to learn to be a potter, only to become involved in murder.



Visit her website http://www.gaylewigglesworth.com/ to learn more about her, and her books. Join her fan page on Face book www.facebook.com/gaylewigglesworth and follow her.