Cheddar Chili Cornbread Pasta Bake

This weekend was bitterly cold up here in the Northwoods. Bitterly. Cold. Also, windy. Yay, wind! (where's my sarcastic emoticon?) I don't think the temperature went above 15 degrees all weekend. We also had a lovely little storm front roll in on Friday and stick around all weekend. It's still here, although the sun is trying to peek through.

Needless to say, it was a cuddle up and watch movies type of weekend. I also had a wicked sinus headache for 3 days, which really meant that I was going nowhere. We did have to deliver our turkey on Saturday night to the in-laws since they're hosting Thanksgiving this year. I'm more than happy to let someone else do most of the cooking!

But Sunday I was looking for comfort food. Light bulb!

Cheddar Chili Cornbread Past Bake, or in other words, a whole lotta yum. This recipe is quick and easy, with very minimal ingredients. Just my style. You're supposed to cook it with leftover chili, but that's like a magical unicorn in my house. Instead, I supplemented with Hormel & some canned chili beans.

5 ingredients! That's awesome. Ok, well you also need milk and an egg for this particular type of cornbread mix. But still, doable!

So basically, you cook your noodles al dente, then layer an 8x8 pan as follows (spray with Pam first, although I forgot and it came out of my Corningware dish ok):

- pasta
-cheese (a hefty amount)
- chili (I mixed the chili and beans together)
- prepared cornbread mix

Then just pop it in the oven for 35ish minutes at 425 degrees. In the end you get something that looks like this:

That picture is actually from the original blog where I found the recipe (via Pinterest), but that's really what mine looked like. You can use a spoon or fork to lift the cornbread up a little to check that it was cooked entirely. I could see lighter spots in the middle when I pulled the dish out around 30 minutes, so I let it cook a little bit longer.

Let me tell you what, it was so good! I really wish that I had brought some to work for lunch today, and I'm jealous that my husband likely ate it all for his lunch. We will make this again! The only thing I'd do differently is add one more can of chili, or brown up some ground beef to mix with the chili & beans. Just to give it a little more chili goodness. Enjoy!