Baked Vegan Mac & Cheese Bites with Chili Garlic Aioli
These mac & cheese bites are vegan, baked without any oil, and served with a tangy chili garlic aioli. Crispy, creamy, crowd-pleasing comfort food.
Ingredients
- vegan mac and cheese follow the link for my recipe
- 1 cup chickpea flour
- 1 cup water
- 2 cups breadcrumbs panko or another fine crumb
- 1/2 tsp flaky sea salt
For the Chili Garlic Aioli
- 4 tbsp vegan mayonnaise
- 1 tbsp chili garlic sauce
- 1 tsp rice vinegar
- 1 tsp agave
Instructions
- Prepare vegan mac and cheese according to my recipe, linked above. You want to use macaroni noodles (little tube shapes)!
- Let cool in the freezer for at least an hour or in the fridge for at least 4 hours — the longer you can let this cool, the easier it will be to work with.
- Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and use a small cookie scoop or a heaping tablespoon measure to form little balls. Try to pack them in as tightly as possible to keep the shape intact, but don't worry if it's not perfect. When you bread them it won't matter. Freeze these for 5 hours or overnight.* (see recipe notes)
- Once cooled, prepare two bowls — one with the chickpea flour and water, the other with the breadcrumbs and sea salt. The chickpea flour mixture will serve as your "egg" binding** (see recipe notes).
- Preheat your oven to 375F / 190C and make sure your rack is in the middle of the oven. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or aluminum foil. (I recommend parchment paper because you won't have to deal with anything sticking to the sheet!)
- Take each frozen mac & cheese ball, dip first in the chickpea flour mixture and then in the breadcrumbs. Make sure these are coated well and place on the lined baking sheet. If you need more chickpea flour mixture, it's a 1:1 ratio — so 1/4 cup flour + 1/4 cup water, etc.
- Place in the pre-heated oven on the middle rack and set a timer for 15 minutes. When timer goes off, remove from the oven and flip each bite over. Return sheet to the oven and cook for an additional 15-20 minutes, or until the outside is golden brown.
- While the bites are cooking, make the aioli: add the mayo, chili garlic sauce, rice vinegar and agave to a bowl and give it a good stir to combine until smooth.
- Serve warm!
Notes
* You can also use silicon ice molds for this step. You would just pack the cooled mac and cheese tightly into each mold and freeze for 5 hours or overnight. This will give you a much more uniform shape and requires less work than the cookie scoop method, but both yield a great result. So just use what you’ve got!
** Chickpea flour has a slightly eggy taste and works the best out of the gluten free flours as a binding agent. I haven’t tried this with other flour types.
Tried this recipe?Mention @thesimpleseagan or tag #thesimpleseagan!
