Freezer Blessings

Throughout our pregnancy and recover and adjustment the freezer has been our friend with well packed goodness to thaw and bake or thaw and eat.

Never was I so grateful though as the weekend Baby was in the hospital. We did not know that all my meals would be provided, so Mr Pear raided our freezer packing me a snack bag of muffins and granola bars. Even though I did not need them for breakfast and lunch, they were fabulous midnight snacks!

This week I need to begin replenishing the freezer baking. We are low on cookies, muffins/loaves/granola bars (for breakfasts), and hamburger buns.

We were not able to go to Church on Sunday, Baby was still needing the quiet, so after nap time Miss Pear and I played in the kitchen, something that has been much harder to do since Baby arrived.

We made two batches of cookies, one was just a large recipe that completely filled the BOSCH, and one I doubled. I will include the recipes later this week.

What I have discovered lately is that freezing the cookie dough is working much better than baking all the cookies and then freezing them. I find that once frozen the cookies bake up better, they always taste fresh (some cookies get that freezer taste very fast), and they store better.

To store the cookies I first line a sheet pan with waxed paper (parchment would work too) then use a scoop to make rounds of dough. If the batch does not all fit on one pan I will often just layer them by using another sheet of waxed paper. Then I freeze the dough. Once frozen enough to easily work with I first freeze one freezer bag of 24 dough balls - 2 cookie sheets worth - 1 cookie jar full. I then use the Food Saver to freeze the rest so that the dough will last longer.

In the freezer I stack the Food Saver cookie dough on the bottom of the pile making sure the newest is on the bottom. On top of that I stack the bags, again making sure the newest is on the bottom.

The reason I do this is that the Food Saver bags are more expensive, so if I am going to bake them in the next month or so there is no reason to use them, a freezer bag will do great!

Sunday we baked to trays of cookies, froze 2 bags of cookies and 2 Food Saver packages! Very successful afternoon, and lots of fun!

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