An entire Christmas Eve dinner prepared in advance, frozen and reheated just hours before Santa is scheduled to arrive: It sounds like some kind of Mad Men-era ad campaign for Frigidaire, but in fact was a plan I hatched after the gruelling last-minute race I ran to get hot appetizers, a salad, a turkey, several side dishes and a warm apple crisp on the table for Thanksgiving.

Here is the menu I have devised so I can sip champagne as my main course warms in the oven and my dessert thaws on the countertop:

I’ll start off the evening with Parmesan biscuits — sliced from logs of savoury dough I mixed, shaped, wrapped and froze in November. An hour or two before cocktails, I’ll preheat the oven, slice the defrosted dough and bake the treats and serve them. While the oven preheats, I’ll pull some frozen cooked shrimp from the freezer, defrost them under cold running water in a colander in the sink, then place them in a bowl over ice alongside some horseradish-enhanced cocktail sauce for dipping.

The first course: easy-to-serve soup, a porcini mushroom and chestnut soup I made a while back. After cooking and puréeing the soup, I poured it into an airtight container and, yes, froze it. All I’ll need to do before serving is defrost it, reheat it and garnish each portion with a dollop of crème fraîche and a sprinkling of parsley. Sliced, reheated loaves of olive and rosemary bread from my favourite artisanal bakery will be a perfect accompaniment. Crowd-pleasing, crowd-friendly spinach and sausage lasagna is the main course.

I’m still mulling over dessert options. But whatever I choose, I am secure in the knowledge that it will be made and frozen in advance, so I have time to spare for last-minute shopping, gift-wrapping and hot chocolate drinking.