I love to bake, but I don’t always love to drag out all of the ingredients needed to bake. This is especially true now that I’m baking everything from scratch rather than from boxed mixes. To solve this problem, I started making my own ready-made baking mixes.
As I was making cornbread last week, I realized how many different ingredients I had out to make a little 8×8 pan of cornbread for one meal. To maximize my efforts, I decided to mix up the dry ingredients for five batches of cornbread while everything was out. I mixed one batch in a bowl and the other four in Ziploc freezer bags.
I then labeled the outside of the bag to show what the mix was, what needed to be added, and the baking temperature and time. (Take a lesson from my mistake, and label them BEFORE you put the ingredients in. Oops!)
Cornbread Mix
Here’s what went into the bags:
3/4 c. corn meal
1 1/4 c. all-purpose flour
1/2 c. sugar
2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1/3 c. powdered milk*
Here’s what I need to add before baking:
1 scant c. warm water
1 egg
1/4 c. light olive oil
*If you prefer, you can skip the powdered milk and warm water and use 1 c. of milk before baking instead.
Bake at 400 degrees for 20 minutes. I make this in my toaster oven (which is also a convection oven), and it’s delicious!
The last time we had Crock Pot Black Bean Soup, it just cried out for cornbread to go with it. I was able to grab a bag of mix, add three ingredients, and have cornbread ready in no time. I’m thinking about doing this each time I make a batch of any baked goods. Then I’ll have mixes on-hand the next few times I want to bake each item.
If you want to try making your own baking mixes, it would work well with these recipes too:
Cinnamon Pancakes
Chocolate Zucchini Bread
Applesauce Cake
Deep Dark Chocolate Cake
Cranberry Oatmeal Cookies
Grandma’s Pumpkin Bundt Cake
I do a premade pancake "bisquick" mix, but I never thought of this…how cool! I have the opposite problem as you; I have no freezer space. I'm gonna try this mix and store it in the pantry, and hopefully it will still work!
@Dede, Yeah, I was kinda wondering if this really needed to go into the freezer.
They don’t have to go in the freezer, but they do stay fresher that way. I also had very little cupboard/pantry space so the freezer was the perfect solution for me.
How cool! I have just started dabbling in freezer cooking! Never thought of this – great idea!!!
Thanks!
Dian
Great idea! I have a big freezer and love to have easy things to grab out in a pinch. Yesterday, I cooked several pounds of ground meat and put it in one pound packages. Tonight, I cooked a whole box of spaghetti and it will make probably 3 meals for us (just two of us). So….I think I will add the cornbread mix as well.
I LOVE to brown meat and stash it in the freezer. It makes those I-don’t-want-to-cook nights easier to deal with!
Anyone have a good recipe for doing this with bisquick?? Also where is a good place to start with freezer cooking???
I’m thinking you could do just about any Bisquick recipe you want. Just add the Bisquick and other dry ingredients ahead of time. Add the liquids later. Freezer cooking-wise…. I started with recipes I use all the time, ones I figured would freeze well. That way I wasn’t trying new recipes AND freezer cooking at the same time.
I do the same thing when I make homemade bread in my bread machine. I have all the ingredients except the yeast and butter in ziploc bags. This really saves time.
I also cook chicken and dice it up into freezer size packages. Then I have it handy for soup, salads. or quesadillas.
Great idea for the homemade bread & chicken. Funny you would mention the chicken, because I just mentioned this to my mom today. Her response was to tell me that she browns 5 lbs. of ground beef at once and freezes it in 1 lb. packages. Thanks for the ideas Penny!
How long you can hv it on the freezer?
Good question Gissel. I’ve had some in there for a few months, but they don’t usually last much longer than that at our house. 😉
Just came across your post. This would go great with Chili. I make a large pot of chili and then divide into quart bags to freeze for quick meals. Also, do the same with steamers(bbq or sloppy joes). I got started freezer cooking using the Once-A-Month Cooking cookbook. Meals in the freezer come in very handy on busy nites.
Oh those are PERFECT ideas for freezer meals! Love it!
Another note ~ I also label my freezer meals w/ the directions needed to prepare and bake the meal. All in the hopes that someone else can look in the freezer and prepare a meal once in awhile. Wishful thinking I know but hey it’s worth a try ;0)
Ha! Hats off to you! I love that idea… especially someone else doing the cooking. 😉
I have a similar pancake mix. I got sick of mixing up a batch of pancakes all the time & I’m not a Bisquick kinda girl so I made up a very large container of homemade whole wheat bisquick mix. I attached a label to the front of the container that says “Use 1 cup, add 1 egg and 1/2c of milk”. Now any time my kiddies want pancakes I know I’m giving them healthy, homemade pancakes without all the fuss.
Oh it’s such a pain to drag out all those ingredients for pancakes. This is perfect!!
Great idea! I do the same thing with pancake/biscuit mix, but never thought to do it with cornbread. I’ll have to make some next time!
Oh that’s ironic. My daughter just asked me about making pancakes for breakfast tomorrow. I was thinking “Gee… I wish I had some pancake mix mixed up in the freezer!” I’m going to have to follow in your footsteps.
Thanks for the master mix for cornbread. I have one for pancakes/waffles, muffins and another for biscuits. I also make up my own mixes and instead of putting everything into bags I will put it into one container and then figure out how many cups I need and then add the wet ingredients each time I make them. For freezer meals check out The Big Cook, the book is great 🙂
I LOVE the idea of doing a big container and figuring out how many cups you need each time. I hate to use the bags, so that would be a GREAT alternative. Thanks for sharing that. 🙂