Why I Refuse to Make Homemade School Snacks

Last year I fell into a dangerous and life-consuming rut, I tried to Betty Crocker my way into my kid’s hearts and stomachs by baking their school snacks. Dear lord was this ever an ill-advised mission. Here is why I refuse to make homemade school snacks anymore.

Who ever said that making your own school snacks not only saves time but money as well must be either a pro-baker with a pantry full of supplies but must also be able to whip up these goodies at lightning speed. Me not so much.

I spent hours pouring over Pinterest trying to find the perfect recipes—HOURS. I don’t know about you but time is money in my life and if I am curled up on a couch fixated on the beautifully curated pictures trying to find snacks that will appease all six people in this house-or at least the two in school I am not saving time. The mere mention of raisins had me clicking the X at the top of the page and searching again.

I found the illustrious recipe that would be both healthy and delicious. It was a chocolate zucchini loaf (much like this one) that I could easily make into individual muffins. I thought I was winning but that is where the real work actually started.

Because I am not a baker I had to head out to do the shopping. Grocery store for over a dozen zucchini’s and then Costco for the bulk supplies because a family of six needs to buy everything in bulk. 10 bs of flour, sugar (unbleached because that shit is bad for you), brown sugar, organic vanilla because the artificial stuff is made from beaver butt excretions, 5 lbs of chocolate chips, only the finest cocoa because fuck these are my kids and I am trying to mask the healthy goodness of zucchini for fuck sakes. Basically, I spent a gazzilion dollars and all of this crap takes up a ton of space so I had to buy containers to house all of it because mice love this shit.

Of course, I needed new muffin pans because the ones I had have seen some major hardships and my lack of being able to clean them properly. They were basically the charred remains of muffin pans so new shit had to be bought as well as corresponding liners, both silicon and paper, because I am fancy like that.

How long did all of this take? HOURS ->again time is money.

After unloading the car and putting everything away in their fancy new containers I put everything back onto my counters and started the brutal task of shredding all those zucchinis because I decided to quadruple the fuck out of that recipe (side note: the recipe was huge to begin with).

I then spent the next four hours baking batch after batch after batch of these deliciously healthy chocolate zucchini muffins. The kitchen was a disaster, I was an emotional wreck, the whole family ate the muffins for lunch and dinner because there was no way I was breaking concentration to make anything else, I was determined to succeed.

Once done and cooled we saran wrapped the muffins individually and placed them in our freezer so we could easily put them in the lunch bags. Except we did not have as many as I thought we would have (i.e. we kept eating them) and I felt like I had spent a whole day consumed with making these.

It was at this moment I vowed to never go on this mission again and if you see my kids at school you will see that beside their sandwiches is some pretty great yogurt drinks and granola bars that have been conveniently purchased at Costco while I was doing my groceries anyway. Total time spent 1 minute each to find the right aisle.

BUT if you are into that kind of baking thing and are looking for some tried and true recipes check out these goodies from some friends :0

These Cowboy Cookies from Love Life Simplified->

These Omelette Muffins from The Mommy Mix->

Or maybe these Banana Chocolate Muffins from Hillary With 2Ls->

Or these Healthy Mighty Muffins from Lindsay Gee->

Aneta Alaei

Aneta is a Toronto-based mom of four that loves a good meal, great company, and learning something new. In her free time, you can find her trying to keep yet another plant alive.

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