Stephanie emailed me yesterday with this question:
First off, I’d encourage you to perhaps discuss with your husband/son the possibility of making some fresh stuff and some frozen and re-heated stuff each week. Maybe that’s not an option, but maybe you could come to a happy medium that works for everyone?
Secondly, there are many batter recipes which can be prepared ahead of time, refrigerated, and then used in the morning. I’d experiment with some of your favorite muffin, pancake, waffle, and french toast batter recipes and see how they work. You might even try make a double batch up and using it for two mornings. (See some muffins recipes here to get started with ideas.)
Other recipes which work well being made ahead of time and refrigerated overnight are coffee cakes, french toast, and breakfast casseroles. You might also consider using your crockpot.
To further speed up the preparation of these recipes the night before,
if you have a block of 30 minutes sometime, you might consider putting
together baking mixes with the dry ingredients from your favorite
muffin, pancake, coffee cake, and waffle recipes. If you know you like the recipe
and you’ll be making it a lot, you might as well mix up a bunch to have
on hand!
Personally, if I were in your shoes and my husband left for work at 5:30 a.m., I’d likely come up with a plan where some mornings we’d do cold cereal, some mornings we’d do toast and eggs, some mornings we’d do something like waffles or coffeecake that I’d made up the night before. This way, we’d be having a nice variety of breakfasts–some which were fresh-baked–but I wouldn’t have to get up an hour ahead of time or more to get them on the table!
Those are just a few of my ideas, I’d love to hear other readers’ helpful input on Stephanie’s question. Perhaps some of you are in a similar situation and can give some practical advice as to what has worked for you? Or if you have any delicious recipes which can be made overnight and refrigerated, please do share those as well!