My First Crock Pot Experience!

Diving in to my new plethora of kitchen appliances I decided to start with the crock pot. I've had a bunch of recipes bookmarked that are made in the crock pot/slow cooker, but since I didn't have one up until a few weeks ago I never made them. But now I can! First up, if you couldn't guess, was Mac n Cheese! This time a Creamy Macaroni Cheese Recipe from Paula Deen.

Ingredients:
- 2 cups uncooked elbow macaroni
- 4 tbsp butter, cut into pieces*
- 2 1/2 cups (about 10 ounces) grated sharp Cheddar cheese (I actually used shredded)
- 3 eggs, beaten
- 1/2 cup reduced fat sour cream
- 1 (10 3/4 oz) can condensed Cheddar Cheese Soup
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1 cup fat free milk
- 1/2 tsp dry mustard
- 1/2 tsp black pepper
*(As I wrote these ingredients out, I realized that I didn't cut the butter in to pieces, which may have had something to do with my end result. I'll get to that. I also used low fat dairy products when the original calls for full fat).

Directions:
- Boil the macaroni in plenty of water until tender; drain.
- In a medium saucepan, mix butter and cheese. Stir until the cheese melts.
- In a slow cooker, combine cheese/butter mixture and add the eggs, sour cream, soup, salt, milk, mustard, and pepper and stir well. Then add drained macaroni and stir again.
- Set the slow cooker on low setting and cook for 3 hours, stirring occasionally.

The almost final product still in the pot...

So the final product? Well as I've said with almost every other macaroni and cheese recipe, it's never going to be bad. But this probably wasn't my favorite. A couple of things... I think one of the great things about a crock pot is that your ingredients can sit and cook while you do other things (run errands, go to the gym, shop, etc.), but this recipe said to stir frequently so that sort of defeats the crock pot purpose. Also, my cheese/butter mixture was very clumpy and in the final product there were some weird chunks that seemed to turn into fat (like the kind of fat you pick off a gravy or soup). I'm thinking this happened because I failed to slice my butter into pieces. I just had a chunk of butter melting, mixing with cheese, becoming a fat mess.

Though in the end mac and cheese is mac and cheese. It was creamy and delicious and despite being a little too fatty or oily was still good. [If interested, in the new PointsPlus world this was really only 7 pts/serving - assuming you get 12 servings, which may be pushing it]. Will I make this exact recipe again? Probably not. Will I try another macaroni and cheese recipe? Of course! And maybe even another one in the crock pot (there are tons out there). In any case, it's another recipe checked off the list and I got to christen one of my new kitchen toys :)