Macaroni shepherd's pie

I made this dish a few weeks ago and it went down really well in my house - well who can resist a pasta bake? The dish is a combination of a meat sauce with a macaroni cheese topping. Even my nine year old who is not a fan of cheesy sauces enjoyed this - I think this is because the macaroni cheese and the mince sauce kind of meld into one another and become one especially when it is scooped out of the serving dish and put onto a plate.

The recipe is from the March issue of Good to know magazine however it also available online too, just click here for the recipe. I did make some slight changes to the macaroni cheese part of the recipe as it asks for 350g of Red Leicester cheese now as someone who is watching their weight I personally felt that this was far too much cheese to be using in one dish so I probably put in more like a 125g to 150g. Also the fact that I only had a 250g packet of grated Red Leicester in the house probably helped with this too. The recipe also called for more cheese to be sprinkled on at the end however I missed this part out as I felt it looked cheesy enough without it.I can honestly say that I don't think the dish suffered at all from this change, the macaroni cheese was still very cheesy and it still tasted great.

Here are some pictures of the dish being put together (please excuse some of the pictures as they were taken on my phone).

The mince mixture - I actually made this the night before to save on a bit of time.

The macaroni cheese mixture on top of the mince, ready to go in the oven.

Straight out of the oven.

Macaroni shepherds pie