freezer recipe roundup!

This one’s super easy to freeze! I like to freeze muffins instead of mini loaves, although both work great! I bake them in a muffin tin as usual, and then flash freeze them on a baking sheet. Then I put them into a gallon size freezer bag (labeled with the contents and date) and just remove however many I need at a time. I’ve found that thawing in the microwave on 70% power for about a minute works great for me, but your microwave is probably different, so experiment to see what works!

I love to always have the makings for smoothies in the freezer! We always have some kind of frozen fruit… peaches, strawberries, blueberries, bananas, etc. I freeze the leftovers from canning in the fall, and buy strawberries when they’re dirt cheap in the summer to freeze. I’m really loving the simple Crystal Light smoothies lately, but we also like fruit and vanilla soy milk blended together. So refreshing and simple!

Enchiladas work great in the freezer! The way that I like to freeze them is to line a baking dish with foil, then prepare the enchiladas as normal (spread some sauce, roll up the enchiladas, cover with sauce and cheese). I then freeze the whole thing (without baking first). When the enchiladas are frozen, I pop them out of the baking dish using the foil, and then wrap them completely in foil, and place them in a gallon size bag (this works best using a 9 x 9 dish). When I’m ready to bake, I pull them out, pull off the foil (saving a piece to cover the top of the dish), put them back in the same baking dish I froze them in, and bake. They take a little longer to bake from frozen (usually close to an hour for me) but they taste great!

These work just the same as the banana bread above. You can do either small loaves or muffins, and flash freeze before putting in a freezer bag. Again, thawing on 70% power for about a minute works great for me.

I am absolutely nuts for homemade bread, and this is the best recipe I have found for freezing. The bread tastes just as fresh and delicious after thawing as it does when it’s just baked! As I stated earlier in the week, to me the best way to freeze it is to bake it, let it cool completely, slice it, and then put it in a freezer bag. (Someday I’ll be cool enough to buy real bread bags, but until then gallon size freezer bags work fine.) For toast, just pull out the desired number of pieces and put straight into the toaster. For sandwiches, I let the whole loaf thaw in the fridge overnight, and in the morning it’s perfect. It can be stored at room temperature after thawing.

I love quiche! And it’s another perfect freezer food. My favorite way to freeze it is to bake petite quiches in a muffin tin, then flash freeze them, and put them in a freezer bag. That way, I can just take out what we need and keep the rest in the freezer for another day. I usually thaw them for about a minute in the microwave, and they’re delish!