Money Saving Wednesday…From Scratch
It seems every time I get on a roll and post for several weeks something comes along and I get distracted. So today I’m trying again, back to the Wednesday posts with money saving tips. I have been thinking quite a bit about saving money on the food budget, but you already know that. I have recently been reminded just how much we can save by simply cooking from scratch. Now don’t run away. With a little prep ahead of time it is actually also a time saver.
This week let’s concentrate on creating a master mix. Many years ago there were some very popular cook books that advocated creating a master mix and then using it to make several recipes. I did that for years and then I asked myself “why not make your own”? It’s really very easy. Here is how…
Take your favorite recipe
List all the dry ingredients
Determine how many batches you want to have available
Multiply by that number…just like this
To make 8 batches of Double Chocolate Cookies
Double Chocolate cookies
1 ½ C flour x8 equals 12 C flour
½ C sugar x8 equals 4 C sugar
½ C cocoa x8 equals 4 C cocoa
½ tsp. baking soda x8 equals 4 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt x8 equals 2 tsp. salt
1 1/3 C chocolate chip x8 equals 10 1/3 C chocolate chips
3/4 C brown sugar x8 equal 6 C brown sugar
Now place all the dry ingredients for eight batches into a large bowl and mix well. Be sure
everything is equally distributed throughout the mix.
Go back to the original recipe and add together the measurements for all ingredients.
Don’t worry about the small amounts such as the baking soda and salt.
1 1/2 C (flour) plus 1/2 C (sugar) plus 1/2 C (cocoa) plus 1 1/3 C (chips) plus
3/4 C (brown sugar) = 4 1/2 Cups
When you are ready to make a batch simply measure out 4 1/2 cups of mix and add the
wet ingredients from the original recipe. No clean-up,
quick and easy .
I use this same method to make batches of favorite desserts, quick breads, breads and
rolls to have on hand.
If your mix includes nuts store it in the fridge or freezer. If not store in air tight container
in a cool, dark place.
This is a great way to use the ingredients you have stored in your food storage. When we
began working on our food storge I asked you to
choose 5 favorite desserts. Why not try making batches of those to begin with.
Questions about our storage system check out the posts on
Where to begin food storage or Mother Hubbard:What She’s Doing Now
Try it, you’ll like it!
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=50fd4089-1fc4-4130-9c84-1a4ecf335f70)
When those master mix recipe books came out years ago, I tried many of the recipes. I learned something about myself in the process. I decided that I really did not have the room to store all of my food storage and also the large containers needed to store the mixes. I also decided that I liked to either just make a recipe or “dump one”–meaning, I didn’t want to measure again out of a large mix–most of the time. The one large mix I do like to use is the biscuit mix. So, I started to make my own mixes, as you advocate, only I would make them one at a time and put it in a ziplock bag or twist tie bag, so that later I could just “dump” it into a bowl and then add the wet ingredients. Even though I would do each recipe separately, it would save time later because I wouldn’t have to pull out all of the ingredients, measure, and then put everything away. Once for Home Evening we made three muffin mixes this way for a cooking lesson–my husband, our youngest child, and me. Our names were put on each separate bag and then frozen. It was a nice convenience later on.
I have mainly cooked from scratch most of my life and have thought a lot about what my personal preferences are. When time really is short a ready prepared mix is a life saver. You can either buy it or make it yourself.
There are other things that make cooking from scratch unattractive to all of us at times–not wanting to get our hands sticky, clean-up, what to do with a big batch of cookies when they are all baked, etc. Also, a person may now be alone and balk at having to eat the same thing for weeks at a time. What can you do and still store and use basic ingredients when there is just one or two to cook for?
Suggestions I have are these:
l.Decide what you consider convenient. What type of convenience do you look for at the store and buy? If you like the smell of freshly baked cookies and buy the rolls of dough, then make rolls of dough with your own ingredients and freeze them. If you are single and can’t eat a whole roll of dough in a reasonable amount of time, then when you make your own rolls of dough, make them shorter. You will bake fewer at a time, but each time you do, they will be fresher than if you had a bunch of stale cookies. If you are in the mood to bake something, make the regular recipe and freeze unbaked portions in smaller batches to be used later. If there are other recipes that can’t be divided in half because one of the ingredients is an egg, consider buying a small can of dried eggs. That way you can easily divide an egg in half and not waste the other half. Your supply of other ingredients will seem easier to use because you won’t have the hangup of “the egg” problem. This may also help if you simply do not have freezer space at all for baked goods and could use the convenience of mixes and also use your stored supplies.
I decided that I also did not like to make drop cookies the normal way–with one teaspoon and scooping it off with my finger, or even with two teapoons, pushing the dough off with the second spoon. I invested in a small ice cream scoop that does the job much faster. These scoops are sold all the time now as cookie scoops. If you have never used one, get one. You will find that the work goes much faster. Also invest in sheets of parchment paper. Put one of these on your cookie sheet and your cleanup will be much easier. You can do MANY batches of cookies with one sheet of parchment paper.
Buy a cookie rack and place it over a large brown paper bag. After the cookies are cooled and put away, you can also throw away the brown paper bag and not have to scrub your counter. If you don’t have a cookie rack, just put the freshly baked cookies on the brown paper bag.
If the batch of cookies is large, I freeze them by eights in sandwich ziplock bags. Place four cookies upside down in the bag and place the other four right side up on top of the first four. All of the flat sides will be touching. If the cookies are moister, slide a small piece of wax paper on top of the first four cookies before you put the others on top. Then they will not stick together.
Some may think it silly of me to try to address all of these hang-ups. But I realized at a certain point that if things got really bad, I would be more stressed, not less. I was already committed to cooking from scratch in order to rotate my food storage. It is important to personally address these issues when times are more normal. Think now of being Pandemic Flu ready. If you are taking care of a house full of sick people, or even just one person, and cannot go out to get food for one reason or another, you will be stuck with what you have in your home. ANYTHING you can do to make cooking easier in that scenario will be important. Not only will you need to eat, but you will also have to get some food into those who are sick.
If no one in your home is ill at that time, you very well could be asked to care for more who are not ill–children maybe–so that they will not be exposed–reverse quarantine.