You can save a lot of money and feed your family more wholesomely if you ditch breakfast out of a cereal box. However, much of the time, mornings can be busy and there’s not a lot of time to spend making breakfast from scratch.
What’s the solution? Try make-ahead breakfasts!
Here are eight of my favorite ideas:
1. Pancakes and Waffles
Pancakes and waffles can be made ahead of time and frozen. Just whip up a batch of pancakes or waffles, let cool, and then stick in airtight freezer bags. When you’re ready to serve, you can warm them in the oven, microwave, or toaster oven.
If your family prefers fresh pancakes or waffles, you can save time by mixing up the batter the night before and then just cooking the waffles or pancakes in the morning. Or, you can mix up a quadruple batch of the dry ingredients together, divide into fourths, and freeze in freezer bags to make pancake and waffle prep a snap.
A few of our favorite freezer-friendly recipes: Whole-Wheat Chocolate Chip Pancakes, Whole-Wheat Chocolate Pancakes, Gluten-Free Dairy-Free Waffles, and Carrot Cake Waffles.
2. Homemade Breakfast Burritos
Breakfast burritos are a hearty grab-and-go food that teenage boys and men seem to especially love. Make a big batch on the weekends, freeze individually in foil, and then they can just be pulled out and microwaved before heading out the door in the morning. (Be sure to remove the foil before microwaving!)
3. Muffins
We love muffins at our house! To make them ahead, just bake your favorite muffin recipe, let them cool, and stick them in an airtight freezer bag or other container. When you’re ready to eat them, just pull out however many you need and microwave or let them thaw for 15 or 20 minutes and they are ready to eat!
Recipes to try: Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins or Pumpkin Carrot Cake Muffins
4. Homemade Instant Oatmeal Packets
Love oatmeal? Make your own instant oatmeal packets! They are quick and easy to make, very inexpensive, and you can get creative adding in a variety of mix-ins.
5. Smoothies
If your family loves smoothies like we do, but want to speed up your prep time in the mornings, try your hand at making Homemade Smoothie Kits with some of your favorite smoothie recipe ingredients. Or, Jessica just cuts right to the chase, makes her smoothies, and then freezes them for later use.
Some of our favorite smoothie recipes: Pick-Me-Up Smoothies and Chocolate Peanut Butter Banana Smoothies
6. Homemade Granola
Homemade granola is such a delicious and filling breakfast. You can eat it like cereal with milk or you can layer it with yogurt and fruit to make a parfait. One of our family’s favorite quick and easy granola recipes is this Peanut Butter Granola.
7. Homemade Egg McMuffins
Why stop at McDonald’s when you can make your own Homemade Egg McMuffins for half the price — or less? These can be made ahead and frozen and just pulled out and microwaved or baked when you’re ready to serve.
8. Baked Oatmeal
We’re big fans of Baked Oatmeal around here! You can make it up the night before and refrigerate to bake in the morning or you can freeze it to thaw and bake later.
What are your favorite make ahead breakfast ideas?
I recently came across this post and I love the idea of make-ahead breakfasts too. In fact I wrote a cookbook on the topic. Some of our favorites:
– soaked oats (in the morning they only need to be warmed, not cooked, but some prefer them cold)
– overnight breakfast casseroles. I prep everything in a 9×13 pan and cover with plastic wrap the night before, then put the dish in the oven in the morning These are our favorites, so filling!
– oatmeal clafoutis – reminiscent of the French dessert, this is basically baked oatmeal with sliced fruit on top, pear and apple are lovely.
– make-ahead muffins. I make the batter the night before and place in the fridge, then bake in the morning.
If you want to speed up the homemade mcmuffins even more, you can use the trick we do : crack an egg into a “pyrex” ( or any brand) glass 2 cup measuring cup, stir a bit with a fork and microwave for 50 seconds. Great if you only want to make a few at a time 🙂
This came at a great time, I’ve been brainstorming ideas to spend less time in the kitchen once this (#7) baby comes. Thanks 🙂
Yum! These sound great!!! I’ve been making baked oatmeal for years, and it’s one of my absolutely favorite breakfasts (and the make ahead aspect is an awesome bonus!). Here’s my recipe for my favorite baked oatmeal (that my hubby calls oatmeal cake so he can feel like he’s eating cake for breakfast): http://marriageonabudget.com/mm-budget-breakfast-makeover/
I love oatmeal packets, and I’m so inspired to make my own now! Thanks!
We like to have a big breakfast each morning so we make hash browns ahead of time. Once a week we slice up 10-14 potatoes in the food processor; mix oil, onion soup mix, and garlic salt; and bake them in the oven. Then in the morning all we have to do is warm them up in a pan and crack a few eggs on top. Lasts us about 5 days. Mmmmm!
Chocolate Crepes-make ahead and stuff with whatever you have on hand in the morning:
http://momsfrugal.blogspot.com/2011/06/chocolate-crepes.html
Banana Crepes- plain crepes stuffed with bananas, drizzled w/honey:
http://momsfrugal.blogspot.com/2011/03/banana-crepes.html
English Muffins- make ahead, keep in the fridge, split and toast for breakfast and stuff with jam, eggs, etc. I also make “breakfast sandwiches” with them by making a ‘scrambled omelet’, spreading on the split muffin, wrapped and frozen.
http://momsfrugal.blogspot.com/2009/09/english-wheat-muffins.html
I flash freeze buttermilk biscuits (rather than buy them frozen) right before baking. When I get up to shower, I turn the oven on to heat. Before doing my hair, I toss the biscuits in to bake. They’re done when I am!
http://momsfrugal.blogspot.com/2012/01/buttermilk-biscuits.html
My kids’ fave is Crystal’s Peanut Butter Granola on Tammy’s Recipes!
Or Peanut Butter Pancakes:
http://momsfrugal.blogspot.com/2011/03/peanut-butter-pancakes.html
I love the idea of making smoothies ahead. Freezing them is even a great make ahead component to a lunch. I prefer a semi-make ahead smoothie… cut and portion fruits and veggies, place all ingredients for smoothies in a glass freezable container (I don’t do plastic)- one smoothie per container. Empty the contents of one container into a blender and blend til you get the consistency you want… and gulp down! I add steamed edamame to my smoothies so I boil, cool, and depod them the night before. In the morning just add them to the blender with your frozen fruits and veggies.
I also love breakfast stuffed peppers as a great semi-make ahead meal, although they do take up to 2 nights to prep.
Night 1: If you do not have any black beans rehydrated, rehydrate amount of beans desired, following the directions on the bag, over night. (If you’ve got left over beans from the last batch of peppers or another recipe, skip to Night 2)
Night 2: Cut your color of choice bell peppers in half vertically and remove the stem, seeds and core. Blanch the peppers and, when cool, cover and put in the fridge til the morning. If you wish to add meat, prepare it as instructed and set aside to cool. Grill/steam/sautee veggies of choice. Once cooled, add to the meat (if applicable), cover and refrigerate. I also like tomatoes that have not been precooked in my peppers so I chop and add them to the meat and veggies right before putting them in the fridge.
The morning you serve them… add beaten egg/egg white/egg sub (amount depends on how “eggy” you like your peppers- I like just enough to bind the ingredients) to the meat (if used) and veggie mixture. Add cheese, if desired, mix well, and stuff into the pepper halves til the peppers are heaping, but not spilling over. Bake until cheese is melted, egg is cooked, and all ingredients are hot. Top with avocado and sour cream or greek yogurt if desired. I like half sour cream and half greek yogurt. I also like it extra thick so, if I don’t have any drained. I drain it on cheese cloth over night on “Night 2”. I also prefer my sour cream/yogurt mixed with the avocado… I just find putting only 1 condiment on my peppers, even if it is the same amount of topping, is less messy to eat and I get both toppings in every bite.
Oops. In the assembly instructions, I forgot to say to add the beans. Also, before adding them to the other ingredients, I like to puree them in a blender til smooth. If desired, you could reserve a spoonful of the pureed beans for the top for a healthier version of refried beans.
My boys love oatmeal. There are recipes going around on pinterest for refrigerator oatmeal. Apparently you soak the oats in milk and Greek yogurt (add whatever fruit or flavors –even cocoa or pb) overnight and the oats soak up the liquid and get soft so there is no need to cook. The recipes say you can leave them in the fridge for 2-3 days. So you could make enough for 2 days on one night and eat it the next 2 mornings. I keep meaning to try it but keep forgetting to buy Greek yogurt–we have all the other things on hand regularly. Maybe I’ll remember this weekend!
I am a bit spoiled that my boys eat at daycare most mornings. I eat cereal or a bagel or leftover pancakes or muffins from the weekend. My husband does not really like breakfast food. He will eat a sandwich for breakfast or leftovers (lasagna, mac and cheese, pizza–which I hate b/c that gets expensive!!). Anyway, my 5 year old loves to make pancakes or muffins from scratch on Sunday mornings as we don’t have anywhere to be until 10. On most Saturdays we do bagels or oatmeal (2 of his favorites). Sometimes if we have to go to early service for a certain reason, I make French Toast casserole, baked oatmeal, or muffins the night before. And the summer is a whole other story!
I teach elementary school and my oldest will come to school with me next year. Since we already leave the house at 6:30 as it is and I am so used to just waking them up and getting them dressed and getting in the car, I think I am going to let him eat in my classroom when we get there (he will have to wait 20 mins. before he can go to class). I have a small refrigerator and microwave so we can do oatmeal, cereal, bagels, maybe even refrigerator oatmeal if it is a success. I really don’t want him eating the cafeteria breakfast which is poptarts, sugar laden yogurt, “sausage dogs” –think corn dogs with syrup (a.k.a. corn syrup and sugar) to dip in. He tends to get super hyper on sugar and HFCS!
I don’t care for eggs, never have my whole life. I have a relative that makes a breakfast casserole with eggs, sausage, cheese. Everyone raves about it. I imagine you could make something like that the night before. I can’t even stand the smell of eggs cooking so I would never make it! Although I can eat French Toast casserole for some reason!
Christy-
You have to try this recipe for overnight oats: http://www.theyummylife.com/recipes/223/Banana+Peanut+Butter+Refrigerator+Oatmeal
She actually has 6 different recipes on her site. This was the one that I tried first and I loved it so much that I am having a hard time trying another recipe! A couple of changes: I omit the greek yogurt (it tasted too sour to me + it is expensive), and the chia seeds (I don’t have any, I sub a little flax seed but you should be fine without any). I wasn’t so sure about the overnight oats but they are SO GOOD! Plus, this recipe is a great source of protein. So I don’t think about food all morning at my desk! 🙂
This is actually one of the sights I pinned. I noticed it said you could use regular yogurt and you have to change the proportions of yogurt and milk but she said it tends to come out watery. I experiment a lot with recipes but usually try to follow the directions the first time to get a base to work from and then tweak and substitute from there, so I wanted to try the Greek yogurt first just to see what it was supposed to come out like. I was just going to leave out the Chia seeds it sounds like she just uses them for extra nutritional value and they don’t change the flavor. Thanks for the info! We’ll try it soon.
The Chia seeds do not have much flavor. They do however, produce a goo – like oats or okra- and act as a thickener; as well as adding more nutrition. If you add 1T chia seeds to 1/4 C water and let them soak overnight you almost have “jello”. Keep this in mind if you omit them from a recipe and adjust the liquid down a bit.
or add an equal amount oats, grits, barley flakes, etc… instead of the chia seeds.
I have a silly question…what size tortilla shells work best for the burritos? I don’t want huge portions but I do want to be able to fold them. Any help?
I would probably use the 8 inch variety…they’re the larger of the soft taco size, but smaller than burritos.
Baked oatmeal is probably my absolute favorite meal! My mom always made it for me growing up and I’d eat it for breakfast lunch and dinner. Another ready-made breakfast idea that my wife and I make every week is steel-cut oatmeal in a rice-cooker. We set it before we go to bed and in the morning we have oatmeal ready to eat. Simple and delicious. Cheap too!
I have been really bad about breakfasts lately because I’ve been out of wheat. I just stocked up though, and we’re back in business. I make a lot of freezer packets – scones, muffins, etc. I freeze whole waffles, eggy breakfast muffins, and make homemade granola. I’ve also made dough balls for easy homemade monkey bread! YUMM-O! You can see my favorite breakfasts on Pinterest : http://pinterest.com/SimpLiveLove/favorite-breakfasts/
But here are my favorite recipes if you aren’t on Pinterest yet:
Homemade syrup: http://www.simplifylivelove.com/2011/05/homemade-pancake-syrup.html
Egg casserole that’s not mushy: http://www.simplifylivelove.com/2010/12/egg-casserole-thats-not-mushy.html
Eggy Breakfast Muffins: http://www.simplifylivelove.com/2011/12/eggy-breakfast-muffins.html
Those breakfast muffins look right up our alley!
Waffles, hard boiled eggs, and breakfast burritos are some of our favorites! And come to think of it, I haven’t made the burritos in quite a while! Thanks for inspiring a project for this week! 🙂
Cinnamon rolls from The Pioneer Woman! Healthy, no (although I cut down on a LOT of the melted butter she uses) but one batch makes 7 pans and they freeze really well.
I have been wanting to make the breakfast burritos for a while…now that I have a bunch of eggs in my fridge (that we didn’t get around to hard-boiling for Easter), it’s the perfect opportunity!
Our favorite make-ahead breakfasts are:
-Pancakes and Waffles. My husband makes an amazing Coconut Milk waffle recipe on the weekends that we enjoy throughout the week.
-Homemade Granola. Over yogurt or just with milk, this is my husband’s go-to on weekday mornings.
-Coconut Milk Smoothies. I can add whatever healthy goodies I want, and my daughter has no idea 🙂
-Protein Packed Breakfast Cookies. I made a big batch of these to freeze today, but I’m not sure they will even make it into the freezer! My daughter likes them for a mid-afternoon snack too.
http://www.savemoneylivejoyfully.com/2012/04/delicious-protein-packed-breakfast.html
This is great! I never have time to cook in the mornings. My kids are truly obsessed with the Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffin (I made over 1000 to freeze last fall) and baked oatmeal!
This is great! Since watching your webcast last week I’ve decided to start really planning our breakfasts and lunches since those tend to be my weak spots in menu planning. I just sat down yesterday to menu plan and kept thinking, “Well, what else can I do for breakfast and lunch?”
I hope there’s an upcoming post on easy or make-ahead lunches soon! Excluding pb&j. We definitely have that one down. 😉
Your earlier burrito post inspired my try it myself. We make breakfast burritos frequently anyway, so when we had leftovers I made up the last one and put it in a snack-size ziplock bag. After about two weeks, I pulled it out one morning and microwaved it in the bag. It cooked really well! Although, I was leery about microwaving in plastic, and how much of the plastic would leech into my food. I want to try wrapping them in wax paper next time, then bulk packing them in large bags. Anyway, the burrito turned out great! I did sausage, egg, and cheese in mine. I’ve also realized that burritos are a fantastic way to use up scrap meat leftovers, since a little goes a long way mixed in with scrambled eggs. Carmelized onions and steak leftovers made it into my most recent batch.
For instant oatmeal breakfasts, I still buy the box of packets. But, I also buy a canister of quick oats. I mix a couple big spoonfulls of the plain oats in with a packet of instant oatmeal, and prepare as usual. The quick oats cook up as fast as the instant when boiling water is added. Packaged oatmeal is way too sweet for my taste buds, and I love that this not only saving me money, but also cutting back on the percentage of sugar and artificial flavors we eat in each serving.
It is so easy to make packets yourself and there are some great recipes out there that make small batches. Then, you wouldn’t have any artificial ingredients.
I like to make French toast casserole the night before. It’s so much easier to just stick it in the oven then to stand at the stove making French toast. It works well when guests are over!
*than* to stand at the stove…Gosh, I hate making grammar mistakes.
Has anybody tried freezing gluten free muffins made with coconut flour?
I have not, but you could try freezing one or two to see how it works.
my sister makes gluten fre cupcakes with coconut flour and freezes them and they are excellent!
Growing up, the most common “quick breakfast” we had was veggie soup! It got us warmed up, and kept us full a lot longer than stuff full of sugar and simple carbs.
The link to the carrot cake waffles is broken. Could you please direct me? Sounds yummy!
We did the breakfast burritos a couple weeks ago and it was a big hit with my hubby and we would have done them again but he’s going on a deployment soon- I’ll make them for when he comes back 🙂
My favorite make-a-head with a lot of protein is Breakfast Casserole with a hash brown base. You make it the night before and pop it in the oven the next morning. It’s a 9 x 13 pan, so it feeds many. 🙂
http://www.food.com/recipe/breakfast-casserole-106227
Love the burritos and egg McMuffins. Much as we love pancakes and waffles, we’re trying to cut back on breakfast sugar.
The more I think about it, the better those burritos sound! 🙂
Mine is my own homemade granola. I make it in big batches and eat 3/4 to 1 cup daily. My recipe is:
6 cups oats
1/2 cup honey
1/2 cup olive oil
1/2 cup raisins or other dried fruit
1/2 cup mini chocolate chips or dark chocolate chips
1 tablespoon cinnamon
Microwave the honey and oil together for 1 1/2 minutes. Pour over the dry ingredients except not the chocolate chips. Mix. Then add the chocolate chips. You could substitute other items such as sunflower seeds, coconut, dried cherries or craisins for the raisins and chocolate chips.
Oops. Hit enter too fast.
Spread on baking sheet prepared with nonstick spray. Bake at 350 for 15 minutes. I store mine in the wax bag the oats come in or that cereal comes in. I seal it with a bag clip.
Just pinned it!
Our favorite is the muffins and the pancakes/waffles. I usually will make some of these over the weekend on Saturday and we use what is leftover for snacks. Sometimes they actually get into the freezer for later in the week. We also do the oatmeal packages as my kids like to have oatmeal for breakfast regularly. It is great that they can do most of the prep work for the oatmeal packages themselves now.
We like to make Chinese tea eggs – basically just hard-boiled eggs, where you crack the shells really well after they’re cooked and then boil them again in a mixture of soy sauce, water, anise, cinnamon sticks, a little sugar, ginger, and black tea leaves (there’s lots of variations out there too, some add orange peel or omit the cinnamon or etc.). The eggs end up with just a very light, delicious flavoring that our family loves – my husband likes to take 2 of them to work with him in the morning.
I do these but only do it with soy sauce (actually I use tamari as we are gluten free) and they are delicious!!
Our pancakes seemed to get soggy when frozen. We’ve found that cooling them completely on a wire rack before bagging seems to help with this.
Do you remove the foil before microwaving the burritos?
Yes, definitely remove the foil first!
Crystal, Maybe that should be more clear in #2. When I first read it, it sounded to me like you were suggesting putting the foil wrapped burrito in the microwave. I wondered if maybe you knew something I didnt, but I wouldnt be willing to try to find out 🙂 I know I dont always read all the comments on posts and I’d hate for someone to misunderstand that one!
I updated the post. Thanks so much!
Skip the bread and make frittatas or omelettes, either a big pan cut into portions or in individual jumbo muffin cups. I make these weekly for my husband with sausage and cheese and for myself with lots of veggies, herbs and shrimp. they keep in the fridge for up to two weeks, and can freeze fine if you let them cool first and wrap well. Just well scramble the eggs and whatever spices you are using, and pour over the other ingredients you have already divided in your muffin tins. I put the equivalent of one egg in each tin and bake at 350 for 16 minutes. They also perfectly fit onto a deli thin type roll, maybe with some provolone cheese.
Breakfast pizza. A premade pizza crust, salsa, scrambled eggs, ham, veggies and cheese. Bake then portion into ziplock baggies and freeze. Microwave for 1 minute the morning of. YUM!
That sounds amazing!
I have been making the peanut butter granola pretty much weekly lately, and here are a couple of tweaks that I really like. I use:
1 c. peanut butter
1 c. brown sugar
1/4 c. unsweetened applesauce
7 c. oats (I usually do 4 c. old fashioned, 3 c. quick)
Put p.b., brown sugar, and applesauce in small sauce pan and heat until smooth and creamy. Pour over oats and spread on baking sheet. Bake at 350 for 18-20 min, stirring once. Then, turn off oven, crack open oven door, and leave in oven for 30-40 minutes.
This seems to make it nice and crunchy, with some big chunks which I love. The applesauce works well in place of the oil to try to make it a *little* healthier. This still has ~310 calories per half cup even with the applesauce.
We have a peanut allergy and miss our granola, anything you could suggest we use instead of any kind of nut butter?
A good recipe for granola that you can tweak to fit your individual preferences is to use 7 c of dry ingredients (including at least 2-3 c of oatmeal and whatever else you want such as coconut, sunflower seeds, wheat germ, grape nuts, cornflakes, etc) and mix in 1 c of wet ingredients (some combination of honey, oil, molasses, syrup, etc). Bake it all at 300, for about an hour (depending on how crunchy you like it, an hour makes it pretty crunchy) stirring every 15 minutes. After it’s cool, add any raisins or dry fruit you want.
My basic recipe for granola is 1 cup wet and 7 cups dry. The wet can be honey, oil, (haven’t tried applesauce, but now I want to!), milk, whatever. For the dry, I mix oatmeal, cornmeal, bran, wheat germ, dry coconut, etc. It is very easy to adapt to whatever food considerations one has. Simply mix everything together thoroughly and spread on jelly-roll pan to bake on a low oven, stirring every 10-15 minutes until it is dried out and crunchy. At this time dry fruit may be added. A double batch is just as easily on two cookie sheets. Hey, they have to be stirred every 15 minutes anyway, why not stir two and reap double?
My granola is 5 cups oats (old fashioned)
1/4 cup water
1/4 cup oil (coconut is really healthy and yummy)
3/4 cup honey
Add in coconut, sesame seeds, pumpkin seeds, almonds/cashews/walnuts chopped.
A little bit of extract – vanilla or almond etc
Bake in the oven stirring frequently until toasted. The less you stir, the bigger chunks you’ll get.
This sounds wonderful! Thanks so much for the recipe. I’m going to give a shot!
I used to freeze pancakes but we do like my dry mixes better then just add eggs, oil, and milk.
I have baked oatmeal in the oven now thanks to this post.
Another thing you can do with muffins is to actually freeze the muffin batter and then just pop them in oven in the morning for fresh, hot muffins!
http://whatsoeveryedo.blogspot.com/2012/03/freezer-muffins.html
I often keep muffins in the freezer for an easy breakfast. We don’t have a microwave, but I pop them in a 300 degree oven when my husband gets in the shower in the morning, and by the time he’s ready to eat they’re nice and warm. And that way I have plenty of time to get ready for the day myself while they’re warming up!
Its a bad idea to microwave foil right? Breakfast burritos are a great idea, but I’d stick to putting foil in the oven or toaster oven or unwrapping before microwaving 🙂
First wrap the burrito in a paper towel. Then the foil easily peels off and the paper towel keeps the burrito from unrolling during heating and maybe eating. Seems to keep it softer too.
I’ve always thought foil in the microwave was a no-no? It doesnt spark or anything?
You want to wrap the burrito in a paper towel before you wrap it in foil. Then, when you go to microwave it, peel the foil off, and keep the paper towel on. DO NOT ever try to microwave foil!!!
I was pretty sure microwaves and foil didnt mix, but the other comment sounded like they’d done it (then i thought maybe she knew something I dont) :)… When I read #2 on the post it sounds to me like she is saying microwave in the foil and I thought maybe someone should clarify that isnt a good idea. 🙂
Take the foil off and just leave the paper towel on in the microwave. With frozen things the foil can sometimes stick, and that doesn’t happen with the paper towel. Plus For me the burrito would sometimes unroll by itself and the paper towel prevents that and helps you hold it as you eat it in the car on the way to work
I have a great recipe for overnight oatmeal in the crockpot that is easy and YUMMY…….we have it once per week. And the left overs heat up nicely for a bedtime snack.
Can you post your recipe?
2-1/2 c milk
1 c. old fashioned oats, uncooked
1 c. apple (or any other fruit)
1/2 c raisins (or craisins)
1/2 c chopped nuts
1/4 c brown sugar, packed
1 T. butter, melted
1/4 t salt
1/2 t. cinnamon (or cardamon)
Mix all ingredients in a slow cooker sprayed with non-stick vegetable spray. Cover and cook on low for 8-9 hours. Serves 4 -6
I put everything in except the milk right after supper cleanup. I then just add the milk when I go to bed.
When it’s just the two of us, I cut the recipe in half and make it one of the small slow cookers.
Hard boiled eggs is a big one with us too. I also love the cinnamon bun baked oatmeal from the Chocolate Covered Katie blog.
I saw something on pinterest the other day that said you can put pancake batter in a zip loc or a bag that you would use to pipe frosting, and freeze it. Then after you defrost, just squirt pancake amounts on your griddle. I think that sounds awesome, and I’m wondering if it would also work with muffin batter.
Cool!
We make Breakfast Burritos at my house – a lot! They are the perfect go-to breakfast on a busy morning. My husband loves feeling like I made him breakfast when all I have to do is hand him one out of the freezer 🙂
http://www.momontimeout.com/2011/08/breakfast-burrito-bonanza.html
We started freezing waffles this year shortly after we got a waffle maker. I don’t know why I’d never thought of this before! I like store-bought frozen waffles but homemade frozen waffles are even better!!
yep, the baked oatmeal is the one for us!, muffins and Spinach, egg and cheese mini quiche cups work really well!
Sounds delicious! Could you please share your recipe for the mini quiche? Thanks!
Hi Mary, sure you will find it here: http://www.sugarfreemom.com/recipes/mini-spinach-bacon-egg-quiches/
I’ve got baked oatmeal in the over right now. I’m trying it baked in muffin pans so that we have single serve portions to grab out of the freezer and warm up!
that’s an awesome idea! let us know how it turns out and how you had to adjust the cooking time!
Hard boiled eggs. One of these and some fruit salad (or just a piece of fruit) and you have an easy, make ahead breakfast!
My make ahead is usually baking bread on Sunday evening that lasts for several days (we have only 2 kids), boiled eggs and then simple things such as yogurt with fruit for other breakfasts.
PS: Is this your food photography? If so, it’s looking great! Hopefully you’re enjoying your new Nikon 🙂
All of the photos are mine except the muffin one — that’s from a guest post Katie from Good Life Eats did for me here. I’m slowly making some progress in the food photography realm, but I have a long way to go to be where I want to be. Any progress is progress, though, I keep telling myself!
That’s great! Love the smoothie shot. I started about 3 years ago with just nature photography but have since started doing family portraits, infants, etc. It’s been a great way to make a small side income, and meet new families at church. 🙂
This was a great post. My hubby and I love the breakfast burritos recipe, and now I’ll be trying some of the other ones too. Thanks for the inspiration!
When I make the breakfast burritos & freeze them, the shell gets an almost slimy-ish feel to it & the texture is off when I reheat them. Do you have this problem or how do you keep the shell from getting funky?
When i freeze the burritos i wrap them in wax paper or freezer paper instead of the foil then cling wrap. they never turn out with that gross texture
Since we prefer freshly-made pancakes, I make a mix of the dry ingredients and store it in baggies in the refrigerator. In the morning, I just add the wet ingredients. I have found that if I make up the batter ahead of time, I end up with flat pancakes. I think it’s because the baking powder is no longer effective.
Here’s how I make up and store my pancake mix.
http://theprudentpantryblog.blogspot.com/2011/11/make-ahead-pancake-mix.html