I’m back to freezer cooking and it feels SO good! It’s amazing the difference it makes when someone asks, “What is there to eat?” and I can list off options that are in the freezer!
On Thursday afternoon, I made 5 different recipes:
- Homemade Energy Bites
- Homemade Biscuits
- Banana Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Muffins
- Carrot Cake Waffles
- Homemade Chicken Nuggets
Here’s a little peek into how it all went down:
I started the afternoon by unloading the dishwasher and hopping on Facebook Live to give everyone there a rundown on my plan and show my pre-freezer-cooking kitchen that was all clean.
I found that doing live videos motivated me to make sure I kept the kitchen clean during the freezer cooking session. I always need this kind of motivation because stopping to clean up as I go is not really my first choice. But it makes such a difference at the end.
You can watch my Freezer Cooking video here to see a peek into my kitchen, if you’re interested.
I started off the Freezer Cooking session by making Homemade Energy Bites. This is one of those recipes that we’ve made over and over and over again and it’s family favorite.
It’s so easy to make, these are so versatile, and everyone loves them! Plus, not only are they a great snack, but they even suffice as breakfast in a pinch! 🙂
I almost didn’t make these, because as I was getting ready to make them, I realized that we didn’t have any honey — which is kind of a staple ingredient in this recipe! 🙂
I put on my thinking cap and rummaged through the cupboards and refrigerator and decided to try subbing maple syrup for the honey. It made the Energy Bites a little stickier and I ended up adding a little flour to the recipe, but it worked!
For those of you who might be interested, as you can see in the photos above, I set up my tripod and did a quick live video while finishing up making these. It was my first attempt at actually “cooking” while being on live video and I was happy with how it went.
We also had a funny conversation on the video about how I only have two kinds of looks — the dressed up look or the completely dressed down look — and I answered questions about why I was wearing a nice shirt to cook in. 🙂 Watch the video here, if you’re interested.
After I finished the Homemade Energy Bites, I then moved on to making Homemade Biscuits. I use the recipe from the Better Homes & Gardens Cookbook — one of my very favorite basic cookbooks in existence and a cookbook I think every cook needs to own!
I accidentally mostly melted the butter, so instead of making cut-out biscuits, I made drop biscuits. They may not have looked as pretty, but they tasted just as delicious!
Next up, I made the Banana Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Muffins. This was a new-to-me recipe and I was anxious to see how they turned out.
I used some of the marked down yogurt I got recently for the Greek yogurt the recipe called for. Mostly because that was all the yogurt we had, but also because I did not like the lime flavoring of these yogurts and was trying to use them up!
This recipe is made in the blender — which made it super easy! However, I also noticed that since the batter was a little thick, it got warmed up because of having to blend it for a few minutes on high.
This meant, that when I added in the chocolate chips, they melted somewhat due to the warmed up batter. It gave a sort of swirled look to the muffins — which was different than I was expecting.
Honestly, I might be weird, but I prefer chocolate chunks in my muffins to chocolate swirls, so I thought that was a drawback to this recipe.
The biscuits were delicious (of course I had to “taste-test” one warm from the oven!), but the Banana Muffins were a bit of a let-down. I think it’s because they are gluten-free and the flour in them is oat flour. It just isn’t as fluffy and yummy as it would be with regular flour.
Oh well. Not all recipes can be homeruns, right? And if you’re gluten-free, it’s definitely a pretty good recipe to try.
Next, I made the Carrot Cake Waffles. I devoted a whole post to these because this was the surprising favorite of the Freezer Cooking Day.
If you’re looking for a new twist on waffles, have some extra carrots to use up, or are looking for ways to sneak more veggies into recipes, go try this recipe! All my family really loved it!
And finally, I made Homemade Chicken Nuggets. (Can you believe it was my first time to make Chicken Nuggets?)
These were easy and quick to make, but I think that next time around, I won’t bother to cut them in chunks. My family would like them just as well if I just sprinkled all the ingredients on top and coated chicken tenderloins and baked them.
If you’re interested, you can watch my quick video here — complete with spilled muffin batter on my shirt! — where I show you all of the finished recipes!
I Need Your Feedback!
I’d love to hear from you! If you followed me along for this Freezer Cooking Day, could you give me your honest feedback? Did you like me posting on Snapchat and Facebook Live? What would you like to see more of? How would like for me to blog/post about these Freezer Cooking Days?
I’d love to hear your feedback and input and suggestions. So much has changed in social media since when I was regularly live-blogging my Freezer Cooking and I’m trying to determine the best way to conduct these sessions so that it’s fairly simple for me, but also fun and inspiring for you all. Let me know in the comments!
It looks like you were busy today. I love freezer cooking. One thing I always keep on hand is banana bread muffins. I suppose I could add chocolate chips to them, but so far the kids like them wonderfully they way they are.
Ages ago, I won a giveaway on your blog for a terrific custom-made apron (in fabrics of my choice) from the Marie-Madeline studio. You might want to get one to protect your nice clothing during the freezer cooking. I appreciate the apron and all of the valuable information I’ve received from your blog over the years. Thank you!
I have multiple aprons from them and LOVE them!
I am sooooooo glad you are back to the Freezer Cooking and sharing it on the blog! “Back in the day” when you were early on with the blog, you used to do it all the time – and I LOVED it! Some of our (still) family favorites are from your blog.. the Pizza dough, Baked spaghetti, Tetrazini and a bunch of others! I absolutely do not like Snapchat – but Facebook is all good… 🙂 Please keep it up! You ROCK!
Oh yay! Thank you so much for your kind encouragement!!
I like the facebook live, snap chat and periscope. Your videos and blog are inspiring!
Aw, thank you SO much for your kind words!
Hey Crystal!
I really enjoy you sharing how you improvise on your recipes. You have a real gift for that. I will be trying your chicken nugget recipe. I have a cornflake chicken recipe where I coat my chicken in crushed corn flakes, parmesan cheese and seasonings and throw in the oven to bake. I like to cut my chicken into strips like you said you might try next time. Keep sharing your freezer cooking adventures. I enjoy them because they are relatively easy and generally things that regular ole people eat!
Thanks so much for your encouragement!
I can never get motivated to do a whole cooking day, but I’m definitely going to try the energy bites. I’ve been taking bars to work for snacks because I never have enough time to eat something that takes longer than about 2 minutes. These will be healthier and surely less expensive than the bars I’ve been buying. Plus, they are all healthy ingredients. Thanks!
I had a go at making the banana muffin recipe and unfortunately it wasn’t a hit in our household. I didn’t mind them but I did find the yoghurt affected the flavour a lot. Next time I would probably use half the amount of yoghurt and oats and then just fold some flour in at the end with a bit of extra milk if its too thick.
I love the energy bite idea – I’ve got to try that out for my picky son. I have a question for you. I’m going to be making egg/sausage/cheese/muffin-type sandwiches for school mornings. Have you done anything like that before? I’m wondering if I should freeze the entire sandwich together as a whole, or freeze everything separately and then assemble when it’s time to eat.
I used to regularly make these in batches for my not-picky husband with ham, egg, cheese on either a bagel or english muffin. I’m not sure if this is helpful, but I stopped making them because he didn’t like the bread part when it was reheated because when he’d microwave it, it would get so soft — he prefers toasted bread. I did toast the bread before i froze it, but it still wasn’t his favorite when it was frozen assembled and reheated. He told me that he’d prefer if I did it again to have just the sandwich fillings frozen so that he could just toast bread on the day he wants to eat it, and then put the reheated sandwich ingredients on top of the bread. I haven’t tried it unassembled yet. Something to consider if your son likes toasted vs. soft/microwaved bread.
Thanks, Jen. Fortunately, my son microwaves rather than toasts. (Yuck!) I think I’ll try a round where I assemble it all and see how that works out. Time to start up the test kitchen!
Thank you!!! I have really missed these types of posts! I need the inspiration to try new recipes and do more freezer cooking. I haven’t watched the videos but I’m not on snap chat.
If you’re looking for a quick banana oat muffin that’s fast and absolutely delicious, I highly recommend this one: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/462956036667720472/
It’s my family’s go-to and we always at least double the recipe. The muffins are great fresh or frozen, and after reading your thoughts about the recipe you tried, I think the secret to oat muffins tasting good & having a nice texture may be that they need to have some flour in there as well.
I really loved the second video you did the other day, about the energy bites. I thought it was cute and helpful, and I enjoyed seeing you in your kitchen! The other two videos felt just a little bogged down to me – it would be nice if they were a tad more concise or had a helpful freezer baking tip in them 🙂 Overall I think you’re doing a great job, though – you have inspired me so much with your freezer baking posts in the past and I am thrilled that you’re back at it!
Thanks so much for the recipe link + the honest feedback! I really appreciated it!
Hey Crystal,
So glad to be seeing more of these posts! Here is a MUST TRY recipe you will LOVE!! I have only used fresh ground white wheat.
http://www.joyfulhealthyeats.com/skinny-double-chocolate-banana-muffins/
Oh! That recipe looks SO yummy!!!
I love how fast those chicken nuggets look w/ coating them all in one batch! I’ve always done one at a time. I can’t tell from the pic, did you pre-bake them or freeze raw? Also, do they look more like breaded nuggets or just chicken? Thanks!
And I never considered freezing biscuits! Genius! Did you pre-bake those?
I pre-baked them. Because I had to thaw the chicken to make them, I wanted to go ahead and cook them. I think if I did it again, I’d make more coating so they’d be coated more.
Yes, I pre-baked the biscuits, though you can freeze them before baking them.
I LOVED reading this post!!! I’m definitely going to check out some of the links to your FB Live videos, and I’m definitely going to be making a couple of these recipes. This is so motivating for me!! I enjoyed that you had lots of pictures in this post and went into enough detail about each recipe that it was helpful to read, but not so much detail that the post got tedious. Also, I’m so thankful that you provide an email sign-up option where I can get each day’s posts delivered to my in-box in one “summary” email. I love being able to quickly view all the posts of the day and then go to your blog if I want to make a comment, etc. I’m so thankful that you do this. I may not technically be visiting your blog as much as if I had to go to it each day to read your posts, but from a reader point of view, it keeps me totally in sync with everything you’re doing and helps me feel connected to your blog/business all the time. Thank you!!
Thanks SO much for the feedback! I really appreciate it!
I LOVED watching your freezer day. I did the challenges along with you when you did things like this years ago. I MISSED it! I can’t wait to see more.
Yay! Thanks so much for your kind encouragement!
I just made some pancakes and waffles this week to freeze. It’s such a small thing, but make our mornings go so much smoother. I will have to try your carrot waffles next time. They look yummy!
I hope you love them!
I prefer the Facebook live feeds as compared to snapchat 🙂 I get to see the whole process and its not choppy and broken up! Looking forward to more freezer cooking segments!
Thanks SO much for the feedback!