Homemade Bagel Bites

I have been on a homemade food kick lately. I want to try to make everything prior to buying it at the store. Not only is it cheaper, but its so much healthier as I know everything my family is eating vs. all of the preservatives that are in convenience foods to make them stay good.

We love pizza, so I decided to make bagel bites. You can get a pack of little lenders 100 calorie bagels for $1.84 at my local Wal-Mart, for 12 of them equaling 24 bagel bites.

I started off by preheating my oven at 350 degrees. I then sliced all of the bagels in half and laid them out on a greased baking sheet.


I then used a can of Hunt's tomato sauce and spooned some onto each bagel and sprinkled the tops with mozzarella cheese.
You can use whatever sauce you have, even homemade!


Once you have assembled the bagel bites, all you have to do is bake them for 12-15 minutes. Watch them, as you don't want them to burn! Or get overcooked, because these are going to be frozen.

Now, I probably could add more cheese, but I didn't! Once you take them out of the oven, you can eat them hot (think a really great easy party food) or let them cool and put them into freezer bags.

Trust me, eating them hot is great too! I love that we have a freezer bag full that are quick snacks. With the bagels being 100 calories, a spoon ful of tomato sauce and a pinch full of cheese, we are looking at less than 200 calories each easily. They are about double the size of bagel bites in the store for a lot cheaper.

I bought two bags for $1.84 each, a can of Hunt's tomato sauce for $.88 and a bag of mozzarella cheese that is only half used for $1.64

So, here are my calculations that show this really does save money!
A box of 18 bagel bites cost $3.50 here. That means that each mini bagel is roughly $.19 cents.
My total cost for 48 bagels (double the size of the bagel bites at stores making it like 96 of the ones at the store, but we will go with 48) is $3.54 (I divided the cost of the cheese in half because I only used half a bag). This means that each bagel is roughly $.07 cents.
There is a difference of $.12 cents each! If we were to say that they are really double the size so technically it is 96 of the store bought ones, that makes ours equal to $.03cents each.

Often, people ask me if I think homemade food is cheaper. I almost always say yes. Now, if you are going to buy a bag of flour, sugar, and some other items and only use it to make one item, then no it won't save money, but when you are buying the staples but using them to make multiple things, it saves money. Even with this example, its still cheaper.
Oh, and did I mention, they taste JUST as great, Great enough that I made 48 and they are almost all gone because Robert loves them and keeps munching on them!

Once they are frozen, we zap them for about 3 minutes and they are steaming and delicious.

Enjoy!