Welcome to my easy and simple Thanksgiving recipe! I did a collaboration with two awesome vegan YouTubers (and bloggers!): Lisa from The Viet Vegan and Katherine & Devin from Two Market Girls. We each decided to make a delicious Thanksgiving recipe for those of you in the US that are waiting to celebrate the holiday. Don’t forget to check out their videos (video links available in the description box of my video!) to get lots of Thanksgiving recipe ideas.

I decided to make a Pumpkin “Mac & Cheese” – a creamy, flavourful and delicious pumpkin sauce with your favourite pasta. It definitely tastes like fall and Thanksgiving to me.

Can we take a moment to appreciate this creamy sauce?

This recipe is super fast and easy to make – it literally will take you 10 minutes or less to make this sauce. It becomes creamy and thick very quickly and it’s probably become my new favourite way to make a cream sauce. I’ve surprisingly never really made a lot of creamy sauces this way before – by forming a vegan roux – simply because I didn’t realize how EASY it was! Now that I know, I’m definitely going to be doing this more often.

As always, this dish can be altered to your own liking – feel free to add different spices/herbs, adjust the amounts and flavour to your own liking. This is a great dish to make especially during this time of year because it is cozy and comforting.

I hope you enjoy!

Creamy Pumpkin Mac & Cheese (Vegan)

Ingredients (2-3 servings):

• 2 cups uncooked macaroni or other pasta
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 2 tbsp flour
• 1 cup unsweetened non-dairy milk (I used cashew milk)
• 1 cup of canned pumpkin/pumpkin puree
• 1/4 cup nutritional yeast
• 1/4 tsp paprika
• 1 tsp garlic powder
• 1 tsp onion powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1-2 tsp dijon mustard (optional)

Instructions:

1. Cook pasta in a pot, according to instructions.
2. While your pasta is cooking, you can quickly prepare the sauce. In a large sauce pan, heat oil on medium-high heat.
3. Add flour and whisk until smooth – this should happen pretty quickly! It will become a paste.
4. Add in the non-dairy milk slowly while continuing to whisk. Whisk until smooth and lumps are gone.
5. Turn heat down to a medium-low and continue to whisk for about 3-5 minutes until the mixture starts to thicken. Add the rest of the ingredients and mix well.
6. Continue to stir for another 2-3 minutes until mixture has thickened into a creamy sauce.
7. Give it a taste and see if you need to add anything else! This is your sauce – flavour it to your liking.
8. Feel free to add some vegetables if you wish! I just added some air-fried brussel sprouts.
9. Once pasta is cooked, drain and add back to the same pot. Add sauce and mix until well-combined.
10. This tastes best when fresh, so try to serve immediately! Enjoy 🙂