As much as I’ve loved the What We Ate, What I Prepped, and What I Spent series that I’ve hosted on and off over the last five years, I’m ready to move on to something a little different. Over time, I’ve noticed that more and more of the foods we eat are things I no longer purchase at the grocery store. The reasons behind that decision deserve a post of their own, but the short version is that most of what we eat these days is home-cooked and home-baked. Especially the baked goods. Almost all of our bread products, for example, are made with my own two hands.
So, we’re giving What We Ate a little makeover and shifting the focus to What I’ve Baked This Week.
This series makeover was inspired by this past Wednesday morning. As I was walking out the door with my two toddlers for our morning adventure, I realized I had four different baked goods going in four different bowls on my kitchen counter: tortillas, banana muffins, sourdough pancakes, and sandwich bread. I thought to myself: I am running a micro-bakery. Albeit one that mostly serves the same six customers over and over and over, and this little bakery of mine will definitely need a punchy name. Every bakery needs a name, after all. And with a last name like Boxer, how could I not call this little operation Knockout Bakes?
Meanwhile, our younger son (four years old), really enjoys baking with me. One of his favorite aspects of baking, is dishing batter into muffin cups. My goal for him, over this next school year (read: he’s at home with me this year, we decided to skip preschool for 2026/2027) is for him to be able to cleanly transfer the batter from bowl to cup. I’m really proud of his progress so far, see photo above! Welcome to Knockout Bakes: What I’ve Baked This Week!
Knockout Bakes | What I’ve Baked This Week, Part I
- Two Large Cheese Pizzas: as always, my two older children love homemade pizza in their school lunches. I always make two pizzas on Sundays, one for school lunchboxes, and one for Sunday family lunch
- Pumpkin-Oat Muffins: instead of using canned pumpkin, I decided to roast my own pumpkin (which also yielded me a cup or so of roasted pumpkin seeds). The recipe yields twelve muffins, which served as snacks throughout half the week
- Sourdough Tortillas: I realized on Wednesday that we were out of tortillas, and since a cheese quesadilla is our two year old daughters favorite tried-and-true lunch, I whipped up a quick batch before we left for the Science Center.
- Sandwich Bread: I love this recipe, it’s super simple, and yields two regular sized loafs. We weren’t quite out of bread yet, but I do like to stay ahead of it, ensuring there is always a loaf or two in my freezer
- Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins: To no ones surprise, we ran out of pumpkin-oat muffins by Wednesday, so I whipped up a quick batch. Pro tip: I store already mixed dry ingredients for this recipe in a masons jar (there are usually 1-3 jars ready to grab-and-go in my baking pantry), so when it’s time to bake, I just need to grab bananas, eggs, butter, milk, vanilla, and sugar. It makes it really easy!
- Sourdough Pancakes: My children love a pancake breakfast. Thursday mornings are typically slower mornings, so that’s typically my go-to breakfast for them: scrambled eggs with sourdough pancakes
- Sourdough Brownies: At the beginning of the school year, I deiced I wanted to have freshly baked shabbat treats for us. And in the spirit of keeping things simple, I decided to alternate between our #1 favorite: chocolate chip cookies (a recipe I’ve been using for nearly a decade), and #2 favorite: sourdough discard brownies (a somewhat new-to-us recipe, but it has been my oldest daughter’s favorite ever since we discovered it)
- Challah: I realized I don’t have my challah recipe written down on my blog. It’s actually a family friend’s recipe that I begged for, so I’ll have to ask for permission to post it. What would a Shabbos meal be without freshly baked challah?
For the first time in a long time, I didn’t bake a sourdough loaf. My starters entire mission this week was to beef up, only to be discarded for tortillas, pancakes, and brownies. But you know what? We’re both fine with that. There’s always next week!