One of the things I hear most often from other moms is that it’s time consuming to eat real food all the time.  It’s so much easier to grab a pre-packaged mix.  Well, here’s a little secret:  You don’t need to buy packaged mixes!  You can make your own in 5 minutes.  Here’s a “pre-made mix” I created that you can use any time you want to make things like pancakes, muffins, and biscuits.  Trust me, take 5 minutes to mix this together and it’ll save you lots of time later. Just sift the following ingredients together and store in an airtight container in the refrigerator.

• one 2 lb. bag white whole wheat flour
•  2.5 Tablespoons baking powder
•  2.5 teaspoons salt

To make things even easier, I added labels on the container that show the ingredients for the things I make most often: muffins, pancakes and biscuits (recipes below).  One more quick tip: if you find you make a lot of biscuits you can scoop out 1.5 cups of mix, add 3/8 t baking soda, and cut in 6.5 T unsalted butter until coarse crumbs form (double or triple this recipe to have more on hand). Mix this in advance and store it in the ‘fridge until needed. When you’re ready to bake, just stir in 3/4 cups of buttermilk for every  1.5 cups of mix .

For biscuits:

• scoop out 1.5 cups of mix
• stir in 3/4 cup buttermilk
• knead the dough on a lightly floured surface
• shape into a rectangle about 2″ thick, and cut out biscuits.
• Bake on an ungreased cookie sheet at 425 degrees for about 15 minutes.

With this mix, there’s just no need to “save time” with packaged items like Bisquick which actually contains partially hydrogenated oil, dextrose (which means “sugar), and enriched flour (not whole wheat).

Try the Magic Mix recipes below, and enjoy saving time while at the same time feeding your family all real ingredients.