For the last several weeks I’ve been using Fridays to do a lot of baking all at once. I thought about doing it on Saturdays, but my husband’s work schedule has changed, and we need to keep Saturdays open for family activities.

I was hoping that by doing a lot of baking all at once I would have easy snacks for my littlest ones that I could just hand out without a lot of thought. Also, it has been nice to have cookies available for a dessert after lunch and supper.

I try to plan out Thursday night what exactly I want to bake the next day and do simple preps like taking butter out to soften. I try to schedule it so that I don’t also have to bake bread on Friday, but that doesn’t always work.

One Friday I wrote down how the day panned out so you could see how I work it around school.

Here was my goal for the day:

• bread – 3 loaves
• Anything Goes muffins
• THM pancakes (for the freezer)
• oatmeal raisin cookies
• vanilla wafers
• chocolate zucchini muffins – one dozen
• plain muffins – one dozen
• breakfast bar – fills two cake pans and we break it into chunks and bits

7:30 – wake up – I can’t remember why I slept in – no doubt it was Jonah’s fault. ☺

8:00 – wake children, grind flour, go on facebook for a few minutes

8:30 – mix and knead bread

8:52 – breakfast – the four oldest children all take turns making breakfast

9:00 – social media and check my blog

9:30 – prayer and Bible reading with the children

9:50 – change Jonah’s diaper and get him dressed

10:00 – Bible quiz – Fridays are a light school day – quizzes and finishing up whatever was missed during the week – plus I plan out the next week and fill in their homework books.

10:30 – shape bread

11:30 – bread in and get everyone to tidy up their areas – school is over for the week

11:40 – mix the cookie dough so it’s ready to go after nap time

12:00 – put clothes in washer and hang up wet clothes

12:30 – cut bread and have lunch

1:00 – start nap time for Jonah

2:00 – nap time for me

3:30 – computer (I didn’t sleep for an hour and a half. I also use this time to read. ☺)

4:00 – starting my baking –  This involves quickly dishing out the cookie dough between six cookie sheets. I have a convection oven so I can bake three sheets at a time. While they’re baking I quickly mix up the breakfast bar.

5:00 – start supper – I decided on eggs and scones – baking on baking day – craziness

5:30 – supper

6:00 – check the computer again – get going on the muffins – make sure the house is getting tidied up

7:10 – muffins in the oven

7:35 – finished and a final clean up of the kitchen

The only thing I didn’t get made was the diet pancakes for the freezer.

I would like to say that this lasted us until the next Friday. As you can see half the bread was gone by the time I took a picture. It lasted until about Wednesday. I’m going to invest in some more muffin tins so I can double the recipes. It doesn’t take much more effort to double a recipe. I had sixteen and a half dozen cookies in total. I probably could have used another four to five dozen. The joys of many children. The breakfast bar we eat as cold cereal or use as a topping on yogurt.

What is your favourite thing to bake?