Easy Vegan Baked Mac and Cheese

Seriously creamy and easy vegan baked mac and cheese will give you all those comfort feels and textures. It's made with easy pantry ingredients and is a family favorite.

Pasta on a weeknight is perfection, especially if it's creamy and easy to come together.

This vegan mac and cheese is oven-baked, and topped with crispy buttery bread. I do have a simpler stove top version that's super creamy, tahini mac and cheese, which we like to make when we need to be a little healthier.

Ingredients Highlight

Any type of small mouth-size pasta can work to make this recipe, most mac and cheese will use macaroni pasta. If you're avoiding gluten like I am, I tend to use gluten-free pasta spirals. 

Cook the pasta as instructed on the packet. I always make sure the cooked pasta is al dente (firm to the bite), by undercooking it by one minute.

To make the vegan creamy cheesy sauce I combine non-dairy milk and melted non-dairy butter with all purpose flour to get the thick consistency, think of it as a non-dairy cheesy bechamel sauce. I then flavor it with nutritional yeast for that magic cheezy flavor.

It can also be made with gluten free all-purpose flour, which works perfectly too.

For the butter breadcrumb topping, any type of sliced bread, I just happened to use brown wholemeal bread for the pics.

Alternatively, panko breadcrumbs or air fryer breadcrumbs can be used too.

The Steps

To make this baked vegan mac and cheese, simply follow the steps detailed in the recipe card below. However, here are some notes and photos:

After toasting the sliced bread, decide how chunky you want the breadcrumbs to be when pulsing them in a food processor. I left mine quite chunky.

Once the breadcrumbs are ready, coat them in melted dairy-free butter to give them some flavor and later on help them crisp up further in the oven.

When making the cheesy sauce, I like to melt the vegan butter and then turn off the heat to whisk all the dry ingredients into it.

Once everything is dissolved, I turn the stove back on to thicken the sauce.

This little cheat always results in a lump-free sauce.

You can combine the cooked pasta and the sauce in a large mixing bowl and then transfer it to the baking dish. This is a cleaner method.

However, if you're like me and want to avoid extra washing, combine it directly in the baking dish. Clean the edges with a paper towel before topping with the buttered breadcrumbs and baking in a preheated fan-forced oven.

Storage

Once the vegan mac n cheese cools down to room temperature, transfer it to an airtight container and place it in the fridge for up to five days.

Alternatively, freeze for up to three months and then defrost prior to reheating. 

Reheat the portions that you need.

Other Vegan Pasta Dishes

People are also loving my delicious vegan pasta bake which requires no prior cooking of the pasta.

An easy pasta with cream free mushroom sauce is great for a quick weeknight meal, otherwise, try batch-cooking this vegan bolognese sauce made with lentils.

Another casserole pasta dish is this vegan spinach & cheese stuffed shells or this chickpea tuna pasta bake.