Fill you freezer in four weeks – Breakfast Week
Zucchini muffins are a wonderful breakfast with fruit and an egg, nuts or nut butter to start your kid’s school day.
I love having frozen meals ready to pop out and serve for dinner. However, I don’t have the time (or inclination) to devote two entire days a month to cooking my family’s meals. Do you like the idea of freezer cooking, but don’t want to invest the large block of time? Try what I do and put a couple of things in the freezer each week to prepare for the next month. School is starting up next month, so I need a few things in the freezer to help with the transition. Some breakfast items, some thing for the lunch boxes and some simple dinners for busy school nights. Over the next few weeks I will show how I fill the freezer, providing recipe cards, labels and a grocery list to help you along. Join me, and lets fill our freezers together!
Each week will be focused on a specific type of meal. This week it is time for breakfast! You will make single, double, etc. batches of one item per day, cool and package it, leaving Friday free to either catch up or for cooking up a favorite breakfast to freeze for your family. I will be baking double batches for my family, but each recipe card and the grocery list has amounts written out for one, two, three or four times batch amounts so you can choose how much you would like to make yourself.
The week’s freezer menu plan:
Sunday: Shop for groceries needed. If the bananas are not ripe enough for banana bread, place into a paper bag with an apple and set aside. I have to hide bananas set aside for banana bread from my family in a cupboard so they don’t get eaten before I get a chance to bake. Check bananas daily until they are ready for baking. If they are ripened enough before your banana bread baking day, peal, mash and freeze the banana in freezer bags measured out in amounts needed for your recipe. Thaw mashed banana before adding to recipe.
Monday: Bake Gluten & Dairy Free Zucchini Muffins from this post. Cool, place muffins in freezer bags, remove as much air as possible, seal, label bag (you can find labels at this post) and freeze.
Tuesday: Bake Chewy Gluten Free Granola Bars (using chocolate chips) from this post. Be sure to cool bars completely before cutting. Individually wrap granola bars if desired before placing in freezer bags. Remove as much air as possible, seal, label bag (labels are at this post) and freeze.
Wednesday: Bake Impossible Bacon Spinach Quiche Pie (you use turkey bacon in this delicious egg dish) from this post. Cool quiche completely before wrapping well. Remember to label (labels are at this post) before freezing.
Thursday: Bake Gluten Free Dairy Free Strawberry Banana Muffins from this post. Cool, place muffins in freezer bags, remove as much air as possible, seal, label bag (labels can be found at this post) and freeze.
Friday: If you had a busy week, today is a good time to catch up on something you haven’t baked and frozen yet. Or you can make up a favorite breakfast recipe and freeze it. Or simply congratulate yourself and admire your freezer stash today! 🙂
Join me next week when we cook up some tasty things for the lunch box. See you then!
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I’m new at gluten free eating and baking and I’m not quite at the stage of using all the different flours. Can I substitute for a simple gluten free flour blend?
Hi! For both the Zucchini Muffins and the Strawberry Banana Muffins, you can replace all the flours/starches (garbfava, sorghum, potato/corn starch and tapioca) with a bean flour based blend such as Bob’s Red Mill All Purpose GF Flour blend. I have done that successfully… You will still need to add xanthan gum or guar gum. If you choose to use a all in one blend, such as Better Batter, replace the flours/starchs and the xanthan or guar gum (it has it in it), however I have not tried that sort of blend in these recipes, just the Bob’s Red Mill All Purpose GF Flour Blend. Muffins are forgiving baked goods, so playing around with the flours is pretty easy and a good place to start when experimenting. If you do choose to replace, bake one cupcake at first and keep and eye on it so you know if there is a different baking time or if you have to add a bit more flour or moisture to the batter before baking up a big batch. I hope that helps. What type of blend do you usually use?
I haven’t use any blend yet. I’ve been gf for abut a month but we’ve just been eating veggies and meats.
Angela,
This is an inspiring idea. I guess I do this sort of thing in spurts and then forget about it. With this type of stock your freezer plan, do you have a goal of stocking up for one month or two or some other time frame? And please tell me how you serve the frozen muffins? Do you take them out the night before into the fridge? counter? or heat somehow in the morning? I usually bake loaves of banana or zucchini bread, slice and freeze – then toast slices in the morning ’cause Im not sure how to do the muffins.
I like to double up meals once or twice a week to fill my freezer normally, but when school time or holidays come around I am more deliberate about getting certain things in the freezer. For muffins we usually pick out a kind to thaw the night before when we make our lunches. I usually just set them on the counter wrapped or in the fridge overnight wrapped (some muffins I make have meat in them, such as pizza muffins, so you wouldn’t want those to thaw on the counter). You could thaw one at a time, if needed, just be sure to let thaw wrapped so it doesn’t dry out. I don’t usually microwave, but that works for my mom in the mornings when she takes a frozen muffin out for breakfast. I generally thaw enough muffins for a couple of days so I don’t have to think about it every day because my kiddos don’t mind. 🙂 Muffins seem to thaw pretty quickly. If I send a frozen one in a container for snack or lunch it is always thawed when my kiddo needs to eat it. Hope that helps! Let me know if you have any more questions and thanks for stopping by!
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