7 Trader Joe's Breakfasts Perfect For Busy Weekday Mornings

There's nothing quite like the start of the school year. New notebooks, the new crispness in the air, new clothes. Oh, and the crushing reminder that weekday mornings with school-aged kids can be pure chaos.

If you, like me, see time slip through your fingers like sand through the hourglass on school day mornings, you are probably in need of quick breakfasts. In pursuit of a less hectic start to the day, I took to Trader Joe's to see what sort of quick and tasty breakfasts were on offer. Here are the best ones I found.

Crumpets are similar to English muffins and aren't terribly widespread in the United States; they're more common in the UK, Canada, South Africa, and New Zealand. Trader Joe's sells crumpets alongside English muffins, bagels, and bread. After a quick toasting, they're great for spreading butter or jam on, and a crumpet makes a nice quick breakfast either by itself or with a plate of eggs.

Steel-cut oatmeal is an ambitious breakfast. Yes, it's a warm and hearty way to start the day, but cooking true steel-cut oatmeal is a 20-minute endeavor that involves some babysitting of the pot on the stove. This Trader Joe's shortcut takes three to four minutes in the microwave and is already flavored with brown sugar and maple syrup. Throw some dried fruit and nuts or fresh berries on top and you'll have a quick and easy breakfast.

Somehow I've lived decades on this earth without ever buying frozen pancakes. Frozen waffles, certainly (I am, after all, a child of the "Leggo my Eggo" era), but I always thought of pancakes as something that had to be made from scratch on a griddle. Which, despite the seemingly simple results, is both time-consuming and surprisingly easy to mess up. Enter the frozen pancake, which tastes great and is ready to eat after a quick trip through the toaster oven. A plate of these with a little pool of syrup is a slam dunk breakfast for my kids.

For those of us who desire something with a little staying power, whole grain is the way to go, and whole grain waffles make a filling breakfast easy to achieve on a busy morning. Like all whole grain waffles (especially frozen ones), I found the Trader Joe's variety to be a little dry. They're most enjoyable with some peanut or almond butter spread on top, which adds just the right amount of moisture to the waffle without layering on the excess sweetness of maple syrup.

I was a little dubious of these pancakes, since they're made with four different kinds of flour, but they were actually quite good in terms of both texture and taste. Each one is admittedly a little more rubbery than a regular frozen pancake, but in general, they are a good stand-in, and the differences are minimal once they're all dressed up with the desired toppings.

This box of frozen hashbrowns, reminiscent of a similar product from a certain fast food joint with golden arches, is one of my favorite frozen Trader Joe's finds. Though the package doesn't include air fryer instructions, I put them in the air fryer for four or five minutes and they come out crispy, hot, salty, and perfect. A puck of these shredded potatoes is a great way to quickly boost a plate of scrambled eggs into a more substantial breakfast on a busy morning.

Poffertjes are pillowy Dutch pancakes made in a special pan. Needless to say, making them on a weekday morning would be too much for my family's busy pre-school routine. These frozen ones, though, are a great change of pace from the normal pancakes and waffles. They cook up in the toaster oven in minutes, and my kids enjoy both the tiny size of the poffertjes and the novelty of their puffiness. On my most recent Trader Joe's trip, only a chocolate chip variety was available, but in the past we've purchased a simpler version flavored with maple.