Back to School Freezer Cooking!

That time of year will be upon us before we know it, back to school, life is always busy and heading back to school doesn't make things any easier. Last year I made a few freezer recipes to help with the back to school lunches and they were so handy! This year I really want to stock that freezer and make sure I have lots of nice homemade goodies for all those mornings when I have nothing to send to school. So here is my list of goodies I plan to make before school starts. Hopefully, I can accomplish all of them, but whatever I accomplish I am still ahead of the game, as long as I get some done I will be happy. So this time I thought I would share my list ahead of time, in case any of you would like to do this along with me. 

Here is my list of recipes:

Chocolate chip zucchini mini muffins:

I like to make mini muffins cause they go a really long way, I always send two of them in each lunch and I individually wrap them to make them an easy on the go treat!

Zucchini Chocolate Chip muffins!

1 c oil

4 tbsp cocoa

½ buttermilk (You can use regular milk and add 1/4 tsp vinegar)

1 1/3 c white sugar

½ tsp baking powder

1 tsp cinnamon

2 ½ c flour

2 eggs

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp vanilla

1 bag of hersheys milk chocolate chips

2 cup shredded zucchini or squash

Mix ingredients in order they appear.

350 degrees 20 mins makes 24 muffins can also be made into a 9 x 13 cake and bake 35 to 40 mins! Good luck, enjoy!

Banana Chocolate Chip Mini or Regular Muffins:

I am not sure yet if these will be mini's or regular, we will wait and see what I feel like doing at the time, mini's take a long time, you can make 300 mini muffins out of one double batch, without a convection oven it can take a long time to cook them all.

Best Ever Banana Chocolate Chip muffins

2 cups flour

1 c rolled oats

2 tsp. baking powder

1 tsp. salt

1 ½ c sugar

2/3 cup oil

6 mashed bananas

2 eggs

1 bag Hershey chocolate chips

Fill muffin paper ¾ full

Bake at 350 for 25 mins makes 24 muffins

I have turned banana chocolate chip muffin haters into lovers with this recipe! Try em!

Small ham and cheese quesadillas:

There really isn't a recipe for this, but I plan to get the small tortilla's and make ham (of course you can use anything you like, the sky is the limit) and cheese quesadilla's and sneak in some veggies in there too if I can! Warm them in my panini press, or you could bake them in the oven, wrap them individually and then put them all in a big ziploc bag.

Easy Pancakes bites:

I got this recipe off of Pinterest, here is a link to it here.

http://afewshortcuts.com/2014/07/easy-pancake-bites/#_a5y_p=2015556

I plan to make them in a regular muffin pan and I plan to use raspberries and make raspberry pancakes, I think these will be so handy for those days when you don't know what to serve! 

Crepes:

I did this last year and what a hit! My daughter loved getting crepes in her lunch with fruit and whipped cream! I plan to make a big batch and toss them individually wrapped in the freezer, super easy for those mornings with nothing to send.

Grandma's Crepes (not my Grandmas but someone's Grandma)

1 cup flour

dash of salt

4 eggs

1 1/2 cup milk

splash of vanilla optional

whisk by hand till smooth (I use my kitchen aid, my momma didn't raise no fool!)

Batter should be thin, fry in a hot griddle or frying pan, until golden brown, use oil to cook, margarine will burn to fast! Enjoy!

So best of luck filling your freezer, I chose these recipes cause they are simple, they freeze well and are totally do-able! I have all of August to get these done, so wish me luck! I hope some of you follow along and fill your freezers too, it sure makes life easier! I plan to post updates as I go along. And if you don't have back to schoolers these would all be nice for adult lunches too!

***UPDATE***
So I decided to tackle the "easy pancake bites" recipe, this was a first for me, but I thought it would be perfect to have lots of little pancakes ready to go for the school year. Now I am not sure what happened but they rose up high like muffins lol, they were supposed to stay flat like a pancake does, lol oh well, not a total fail as they still taste great, I guess we will just cut them in half and use them that way lol.  I topped each one with a raspberry/rhubarb jam. I will be freezing them individually, when it is time to use them just top them with maple syrup and some whipped cream if you have it!

The final result looks like a nice muffin lol! I greased my pans well but they all still really stuck, probably cause of the fruit, maybe I will try something different next time! Super handy to have in the freezer, we made 60 of these today! 

Thanks for tuning in, I will continue to update as I get these recipes accomplished! 

***UPDATE*** #2

I decided to make these pizza muffins here is the link to the pinterest page I got them from: http://inspiredbyfamilymag.com/2013/09/02/pizza-muffins-freezable-recipe/

I decided to make these instead of making crepes, after making 60 pancake bites yesterday, I figured I had enough Pancake/crepe type foods for now lol. Today I made a little over 60 of these pizza muffins, they are so delicious and my house smells like a wonderful Italian Bakery! Who doesn't love pizza right?! I think these will be a lunch box hit! I will freeze them in baggies with 2 muffins per bag, I think that would be a nice lunch size for my daughter. These were so simple! I quadrupled the recipe to get over 60, 

Here is the original recipe: (my changes are in the brackets)

Pizza Muffin Recipe

• 2 cps flour
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tbl baking soda
• 2 tsp of Italian herbs (I used parsley, basil and oregano, enough to make up 2tsp)
• 2 tsp garlic powder
• 1 egg lightly beaten
• 2 tbl olive oil (I used canola cause it is what I had on hand)
• 1/2 cp of milk
• 1/2 cp pizza sauce (I used spaghetti sauce)
• 1 tbl honey
• 1 cp of mozzarella
• 3/4 cps diced pepperoni (I used Ham, my daughter likes that better)
• 3 tbl parmesan (I omitted this and added a little extra mozza)

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

Spray a muffin pan with non stick cooking spray.

In a large bowl, whisk together the dry ingredients up to the garlic powder.

Then whisk in the wet ingredients up to the honey.

Finally, add in the mozzarella, parmesan and pepperoni. Let stand for 10 minutes.
Stir the batter and divide among the mini-muffin cups. Bake 10-12minutes, or until puffed and golden.  Eat plain or use pizza sauce for dipping!

Perfect for freezing! I was able to make 18 normal size muffins.

here are a few mini's I made with the rest of the batter, these pans are perfect for when you just have a bit of batter left, not enough for regular muffins.

Here they are baked, they are beautiful #nofilter

So; beautiful and delicious and easy, how can you go wrong!? 

***UPDATE*** #3

It's chocolate chip zucchini day! YUM!

These muffins are awesome, right now we are lucky enough to have many huge zucchini growing in our garden, I made 60 regular muffins and 75 mini's the regulars are for our home to enjoy as well and family and friends, the mini's are all getting frozen for school lunches! 

I did a triple batch to get this many! 

Making all these muffins makes me extra grateful for my Kitchen Aid Mixer and my Pampered Chef Scoops! 

***UPDATE #4***

Today is quesadilla's making day, this was so easy and simple, I wish I would have thought of this last year! 

There is no recipe for this, you can put anything you want in between two tortilla's! My daughter likes ham and cheese, I asked her to pick a veggie and she chose peppers, now let's hope she doesn't pick them out at lunch time lol! 

This was super easy the only thing that took any time is shredding the cheese! 

We have a panini press, that is what I use to warm them up, it worked perfectly, you can use your oven too. I cut them with a pizza cutter and let them cool. 

Once they cooled I bagged them all, I made 4 large quesadilla's all together, 2 wedges per meal is a good size for my 5-year-old, add more or less as you see fit. In the end, I have 12 lunches! These will be perfect for those days when I have nothing to send!!! 

Ready for the freezer! 

***UPDATE #5***

Today I made Pineapple zucchini muffins, I wanted something with lots of fruits and veggies and I found this recipe online and really wanted to try it.

Here is the link to the recipe

http://allrecipes.com/recipe/pineapple-zucchini-muffins/

I made a few changes, I removed 1 of the cups of oil, because that seemed like a lot and I replaced it with 1/2 cup of applesauce and 1/2 a cup of chopped apples, so now we have even more fruit in there, these are really yummy! I also added an extra 1/2 tablespoon on cinnamon, but that was just my preference.

In total this made 48 regular muffins and 12 mini's, I wrapped up some for school lunches and some we will keep out to eat now, YUM! This is a great recipe for all the nice zucchini that are everywhere right now! 

***UPDATE #6*** Final Update!

Today I made banana chocolate chip muffins! 200 in total! I am so sick of looking at muffins!! LOL! But my freezer is full and I love it! This is a really great banana chocolate chip recipe! Kids love them too! I am so happy to be done with the back to school baking, I now have more than enough to last the whole school year! 

I did package some muffins in packages of 9 for after school snacks when all my daycare kids are here, these are always so handy! 

Well, I hope you enjoyed my back to school baking ideas, and I hope some of you were inspired to do some back to school baking of your own! All together this month I made over 500 muffins! 

Thanks for following me along this journey!