Since we started trying to cut down on the plastic we buy and consume in an effort to produce less waste, one of the things I’m missing are the after school snacks I used to buy the children. Crumpets, wraps, teacakes, fruit loaf, pitta breads, you name it, we’ve bought it at some time or other. They have now gone by the wayside and I try to make my own snacks instead. Where I would have toasted a few crumpets or teacakes to serve with some fruit, I now bake a large batch of oaty banana muffins at the start of the week to dish out post-school to the ravenous children. One thing we’re really missing though is quesadillas and I have bought the odd pack of tortilla wraps for making quesadillas as a treat and then I try to reuse the plastic bag a few times to make up for it.

For those of you who don’t know, quesadillas are two tortilla wraps sandwiched with cheese, cooked chicken pieces, peppers, chillies, whatever you fancy and fried lightly on both sides, before being sliced and served. Delicious! My after school version is slightly more effortless and not very fancy at all. I simply pop some grated cheese between two tortillas and bung it in the microwave for a minute. Then I serve it with carrot and cucumber batons. This makes it super-quick and also saves on the ‘But I don’t like chicken/pepper/chilli’ arguments.

The other afternoon, I was feeling adventurous and decided to make my own flour tortillas. I used a recipe from here, which only required four ingredients: 400g of self-raising flour, 1/2 tsp of salt, 300ml of warm water and 3 tbsp of olive oil. When I had finished the resulting tortillas looked like the picture above.

I then proceeded to fill them and fry them again. The children opted for cheese or chicken and cheese and had their vegetables on the side. I had cheese, chicken and peppers in mine and my husband had the works: chicken, ham, cheese, peppers, chilli and chilli sauce. When cooked, they looked like this:

If I do say so myself, they were delicious. We all enjoyed them. And what’s more, they were more filling than quesadillas made with shop-bought wraps. One quesadilla left me full for the rest of the evening. It was a bit of a lengthy process to make them, which was a problem when they’re meant to be a quick after school snack and we didn’t eat them until teatime(!), but now I know how to make them, I could probably make them in advance on an afternoon if I wanted to.

Are there any snacks that you buy that you’d rather make yourself? What are your children’s favourite after school snacks? Let me know in the comments.