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Easy Breakfast Ideas
Quick breakfasts for when you're tired of cereal and toast, many of them made ahead.
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If you're fed up with cereal and plain toast on a weekday, especially with kids to feed, this list is for you. The trick that keeps coming up is doing the work earlier. Wrap pancakes or waffles in the number your kids normally eat, freeze them, and a minute in the microwave finishes them. Muffins, egg cups and baked oatmeal also keep for several mornings. Everything here is a simple, ordinary breakfast. There's nothing on diets and no full recipes, so look up your own favorite version of anything that catches your eye.
Why these items are on the list
- Frozen pancakes, portioned. Wrap them in the number your kids usually eat; microwave for 1 minute.
- Frozen waffles, portioned. Same method as the pancakes: batch, freeze, microwave for 1 minute.
- Make-ahead muffins. Freeze them, and reheat in the microwave on busy mornings.
- Egg muffins. Eggs, cheese and small bits of veg or meat. They reheat well and are easy to grab.
- Muffin-tin omelets, frozen. A reader's tip: eat them on the go, on a biscuit, or crumbled on a wrap.
- Peanut butter overnight oats. You'll need about five minutes of prep the night before.
- Peach pecan baked oatmeal. Fresh or frozen fruit works. Bake once and you can eat it all week.
- Vegetarian hashbrown casserole. Frozen hash browns, spinach and red pepper. Reheat a cut portion in the toaster oven.
- Denver-style scrambled eggs. Add peppers, onions, mushrooms, ham or leftover sausage, and cheese; it's a way to sneak in veg.
- Scrambled eggs with cheese. Stir in the shredded cheese at the end so it melts through.
- Egg, bacon and cheese sandwich. Scrambled eggs, toast, two bacon slices. Bacon takes longest, so microwave it to save time.
- English muffin, peanut butter, yogurt. It's listed as a quick school-morning breakfast option.
- Bagel, cream cheese and fruit. Also listed as a quick school-morning option.
- Toast with jelly and fruit. Another one listed as a quick school-morning option.
- Yogurt and fruit. It's listed as a quick school-morning breakfast option too.
- Oatmeal with add-ins. Cook it plain, and set out raisins, brown sugar or pure maple syrup.
- Oatmeal pancakes. One source says the oats make them thicker and help keep hunger away longer.
- Sourdough pancakes. They're mild and tangy, and they cook fast in a hot pan.
- Banana bread slices. The bread itself stays moist for days.
- Carrot cranberry muffins. One batch of these stays fresh for several mornings.
- Cinnamon raisin bread. Slice it and add butter or honey instead of plain toast.
- No-yeast cinnamon rolls. They mix fast, so you skip the long wait for dough to rise.
- Spinach souffle. Eggs and fresh spinach. It tastes a little fancy but is simple to cook.
- Egg-drop noodles with greens. A forum tip: crack eggs into nearly done noodles, add kale, carrots or peas; it also works at lunch.
- Dairy-free chocolate chip muffins. Made without dairy ingredients, they stay moist and suit meal prep.
Keep it open on your phone during the Sunday shop, tick what you'll batch and freeze, and save the rest for mornings when you've got a few extra minutes.
When to use it
Use it the weekend before a school or work week, when you can bake or freeze a few things ahead.