This post contains affiliate links. See my disclosure for more information.





Last Winter I went a little crazy making all sorts of creamy, cheesy sauces with butternut squash and nutritional yeast. Last week I craved comfort food and was thinking about making a similar sauce again. Since it’s the season of all-things-pumpkin, I started wondering how I could use pumpkin for a similar sauce.

Truth be told, it was really mac ‘n cheese I was craving. That’s the king of comfort food for me. Creamy, cheesy goodness with pasta, baked in the oven until the top has a little crunch to it. It really doesn’t get much better. With an abundance of pumpkin puree right now, working it into a dairy-free sauce was a good plan.

So here’s the outcome. You’re gonna love this part: this recipe makes sauce for THREE batches of mac ‘n cheese. Make one batch the day you make the sauce, split the others and refrigerate or freeze them for use later. Talk about a quick weeknight meal, already prepared sauce for mac ‘n cheese so all you need to do is boil your pasta and pop this under the broiler for an easy meal. I think that’s what I’ll do for dinner tonight!

Quick note: I used Woodchuck Hard Cider’s pumpkin flavor to make one batch of this. I’ve also used just a regular, non-seasonal flavor hard cider to test a batch. While I like the flavor of the pumpkin cider, this is great with a regular hard cider as well. I share this because in a few weeks, the pumpkin cider will be gone. I don’t want you to limit your consumption of this creamy, cheesy dish to the time of year when pumpkin cider graces the shelves.