Last week, I found to my dismay, that some of my friends had never heard of Green Slime! Since this was a staple for our family while the kids were growing up, and is still a favorite, even when we don’t have kids or grandkids around, I knew I had to share.
Of course when the kids were growing up, we made this the traditional way, but frankly, I can’t tell the difference!
2 containers of Sugar-free Cool Whip 2 packages of Jell-o brand Sugar-free Pistachio pudding mix. 2-3 Tbsp heavy cream. 15oz crushed Pineapple, drained. Mix well & eat!
If you happen to have some kids around, you can always tempt them with some colored marshmallows – even the big kids like it!!
I’m in love with peanut butter! Generally I prefer Peter Pan Honey Roast Crunchy peanut butter – but in actuality, I will take almost ANY peanut butter I can get ahold of.
In the grocery stores, you will find prepackaged mixes for peanut butter cookies, by Betty Crocker (I think) – when the kids were little (and I was too!) I would mix these up, add some chocolate chips, and then, get this, roll them in brown sugar before baking. OMGOODNESS whatever was I thinking? (They were delicious!!)
Nowadays I have learned that less sugar is better, but I still crave those cookies! so I had to come up with a keto friendly version. I’ve been stalling, because, you see, I still had a couple of those package mixes in the cupboard; but I finally mixed them up and gave the cookies to my Sunday school kids! They didn’t mind one bit that there was real sugar in them!
So here’s your Recipe:
Ingredients
1/2 cup Monk Fruit 1/2 cup Golden Monk Fruit 1/2cup peanut butter 1/4cup Crisco Butter-flavored shortening 1/4cup butter, softened 1 XL EB egg 1 1/4 cups Almond flour 3/4 teaspoon baking soda 1/2 teaspoon baking powder 1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 pkg Hershey’s Sugar-free Chocolate chips
(Easily doubled)
Mix the butter, shortening, peanut butter, Monk Fruit, and eggs until well blended. Add in the almond flour, soda, powder and salt, and mix until smooth, and all dry ingredients have been incorporated in. Toss in the Sugar-free chocolate chips, and mix these in by hand. At this point, you can put the dough in the refrigerator for a couple of hours if you want, or you can start rolling them into balls right away. This makes about 25 fairly large cookies. Bake for 10-12 minutes at 350°F. Let them cool long enough so you don’t burn your fingers! They get chewier the next day.
<2gm saturated fats, and 1.2gms carbs/cookie, assuming 25 cookies for the batch
It’s officially pumpkin spice season! Temperatures here in North Florida dipped down into the 60’s (brrr!) and this girl went looking for a cozy blanket and Hot Chocolate! My sweetheart has been saying for a couple of weeks now, “isn’t it time for pumpkin things?” and I kept telling him, “no, no, it’s too hot out!”
Well, it’s time! As you may remember, my recipes are not totally carb free, but are a lower carb version of the foods we love. I won’t bore you with the photos of the mixing bowl and ingredient, because if you follow this blog, by now, you are well aware of what the packages look like. So I will just skip to the recipe. One thing I have to say about the recipe for pumpkin bread that I really love, is that you can basically measure all your dry ingredients with a 2/3 measuring cup! I love doing things in groups of 3 and 6 – my swim workouts seem to always be sets of 300’s or 6 of something, and when I arrange flowers on my cards or cakes, they are generally grouped in sets of 3 as well. (Just call me goofy, won’t be he first time!)
RECIPE
2/3 cup butter flavored Crisco
4 eggs
1-1/3 cup granulated sugar
1-1/3 cup Golden Lakanto Monk Fruit
1 can (15-16oz) Libby’s canned pumpkin, 2/3 cup water
1 tsp ground cinnamon. 1 tsp ground cloves. 2/3 cup chopped nuts (I used pecans)
1-2/3 cups King Arther flour
1-2/3 cups Almond flour
Heat oven to 350°F, grease two 9×5 loaf pans well. Mis Crisco, eggs, Monk fruit and sugar well, until smooth. Mix all the dry ingredients except the nuts, together in another bowl, and gently fold the mixture into the wet mixture, until all is well blended. Finally add the nuts, and then pour into your loaf pans. Bake almost exactly 60 minutes at. 350°, and then turn he oven off and leave the pumpkin bread in the oven another 10-15 minutes to set. Take out of the oven, and cool about an hour, and then flip the pans over so bread is loosened from the pans. Serve warm, or wait and eat at room temperature.
For a special treat, you can also make some sweet cinnamon butter to smear (thinly, because you don’t really need any extra sweetener – but it will make your pumpkin bread almost seem like Cupcakes.
RECIPE FOR CINNAMON BUTTER
8 oz softened butter or margarine
3 Tbsp Lakanto monk fruit (or less)
1 tsp ground cinnamon
Stir and mix well, serve on Pumpkin Bread, Banana Bread, or Baked Sweet Potatoes.
Thanks for stopping by, and enjoy low-carb baking!!
This is a spin off from my Keto Cakelets; I simply replaced the almond extract with Lemon extract. I also did not use little cakelet molds but rather a pan with an indentation designed just for fillings.
Recipe 1/3 Cup Milk or Cream 1-1/2 tsp Lemon Extract 2/3 Cup Butter chocolate or Real Margarine 2/3 Cup Lakanto Monk Fruit 3 large EB Eggs 1 Cup Almond Flour 1/4 Cup all-purpose Flour 1-1/4 tsp Baking Powder 1/8 tsp salt
Heat your oven to 350. Mix in the Eggs, Butter and Monk Fruit until smooth. Add the Cream and dry ingredients, blend until smooth again. Add in the Lemon Extract, and pour into your prepared pan. Bake for about 20 minutes at 350° F.
Once the cake is cooled (I squished my warm cake into this heart shaped pan, so that when cooled, it will retain the heart shape) prepare some sugar-free instant pudding with 2 cups cream, and 1/2 cup milk. Spread over the top, and decorate as desired.
Eggs are naturally gluten free, sugar free, and carbohydrate free, so a GREAT choice for those trying to lower their carbohydrate “footprint” if you will. If you select EB eggs, as I do, they advertise lower saturated fat as well (whether this is actually true, or not, I’m not sure, and I’m not sure how you tell the chickens to shape up, and not put so much fat in their eggs, lol!).
This is a spin-off from a recipe I found from Barbara Bush (Pres. George Bush’s wife, prior first lady of Texas as well). She was well known in Texas for her cooking, and her liberal use of spices in this recipe does not disappoint.
Start off with a well greased 9″ pie plate/pan, and put your prepared crust inside as desired. Frankly this recipe is firm enough, that you could probably skip the crust completely, and it will come out fine (out of the pan, I mean). I have a recipe for crust however, should you like to look in to that (a separate post), but I personally, try to make mine without the crust, for obvious reasons.
RECIPE:
Five XL EB Eggs One Cup Cream OR Sour Cream 8 ounces Finely shredded Swiss Cheese One Cup Finely shredded Mozarella Cheese 3/4 of a medium Vidalia onion, diced small 1/2 tsp Thyme 1-1/4 tsp Salt 1/2 tsp Coarsely Ground Black Pepper 1-3/4 tsp Basil 1-3/4 tsp Oregano 1/2 tsp dry ground mustard 1-2 cloves garlic, crushed 1/4 cup melted margarine or butter (eliminate this if you use a crust) 1/3 cupAlmond Flour (eliminate this if you use a crust)
8-10 oz fresh sliced mushrooms, broiled or boiled in 1/2 cup butter (add these last, and put a few directly on the base of your pie plate or crust.
Mix well together (with a spoon or fork), and pour into your prepared pan. Bake at 350 F for 45 minutes – and allow to set for 10 minutes or so before serving.
Serves 8
Top the individual slices of Quiche with left over mushrooms, if desired. Add some of my Spicy Arugula Salad, and another vegetable, and you have dinner ready in no time!
This is true keto, IMO. Zero sugar and very little of anything with a lot of carbohydrates. Your main carb culprit here is the banana. This time, instead of Xanthen gum, I just upped the amount of Baking Powder, and it worked fine (this time).
Recipe: 3 large bananas 2 XL EB eggs 1 cup Lakanto Golden Monk fruit 2-1/2 cups Almond Flour. 1 Tbsp Baking Powder 1 tsp kosher salt 1/3 cup heavy cream 3 Tbsp coconut oil 1/2 cup chopped pecans (or whatever nut you prefer)
Smash the bananas with a fork inside your mixing bowl. Add the eggs, Monk fruit, oil, and cream and blend well. Add the dry ingredients, saving the nuts for last.
Pour into a 9×5 loaf pan that has been well greased or sprayed with non-stick coating, and bake 60 minutes at 325°F. Turn the oven off, and allow the bread to cool IN THE OVEN for a couple of hours – this allows it to set, and keeps you from cutting into it too soon, lol!
This should have 12-13 slices, and the carb count per slice would be about 12-13 grams per slice, 164 grams in the entire loaf.
I’ve created a new cookie y’all! I’m so excited, and I think you’re gonna love it! These cookies are just a little ray of sunshine!
The taste and texture of this cookie will amaze you – you won’t believe it’s actually low carb and low calorie!
In theory this should make about 40 dreamy little cookies, but it all depends on how big you make the cookie balls.
Start off with a basic butter cookie recipe, altered for keto:
1/2 cup Land O Lakes real margarine 1/2 cup butter flavored Crisco or Coconut Oil One large EB egg 1/2 cup Zen Sweet Monkfruit 1/2 cup Confectioners (XXX) sugar 1/2 tsp salt 1 cup All Purpose Flour 2 cups Almond Flour 2 tsp Almond Extract 1 tsp Vanilla Extract Smuckers Sugar Free Apricot jam Almond slices
It’s a little bit fiddly, as I don’t roll the cookie in almond slices, but rather, I arrange them around the jam.Ready to pop in the oven!
Cream the margarine & shortening & egg. Add sweeteners, salt and blend in well. Add in the AP flour and the extracts, mix about a minute, and then gradually mix in the 2 cups of Almond Flour. Roll into small balls about 2” diameter, and place on a well greased cookie sheet. Then take something about the size of a large marble, to press into the center of each cookie to make a well (yes, like thumbprint cookies!). Now add about 1-1/2 tsp of the sugar-free Apricot jam to each well, and then gently press almond slices around the edges of each cookie. Bake 10-12 minutes at 350°, or until the bottom edges of the cookies are golden. Let them cool 10-15 minutes before removing to a plate.
Yum!
As you get more and more comfortable with the taste, frankly, you can eliminate any AP flour, and use 100% Almond Flour, and you could even drop the amount of Confectioners Sugar to perhaps 1/4 cup, and increase the Monkfruit to 3/4 cup – but remember Confectioners Sugar is already 1/2 the carbs of granulated sugar.
You will have 3-5 grams of carbohydrates per cookies, depending on how large your cookie is, if you follow the recipe exactly.
Let’s not presume that keto is low calorie – lest we forget that FAT has 9kcal/gm, while protein and carbohydrates have only 4kcal/gm. Nonetheless the fat in peanut butter is generally considered a healthy fat.
My boys love “Buckeyes” at Christmas time, which is basically a peanut butter ball dipped in chocolate.
I thought it would be a nice twist to see if I could make it a little bit lower carb, and thus closer to my keto lifestyle – no sense feeling deprived at Christmas time!
Just a few ingredients: 3 cups chunky Peanut Butter (regular Peter Pan, NOT Honey Roasted) 2 cups Lakanto Monk Fruit 1/2 cup real Land O Lakes Margarine Mix well, by hand or in the mixer.
Optional add in: 1 cup Rice Krispies, or Oatmeal, or even Almond Flour – I don’t add any of these
Make your peanut butter balls about 3” diameter, and set on wax paper.
Melt 2 packages of Hershey’s Sugarfree Chocolate Chips (20 oz) – I do it in the microwave at 50% power one minute at a time. If you would like you can also melt some Gulf wax, just a bit, to thin your chocolate and give it a glossy shine – 1/4 of a bar is all you need. Once everything is well incorporated glossy and smooth, roll your Peanut Butter balls a wee bit on the wax paper to smooth out the edges, and then dip into your melted chocolate lifting them out with a fork. Tap off the excess chocolate. And place the Peanut Butter candy ball back into the wax paper to dry. You can eat these in about 15 minutes, but the chocolate really takes a few hours to set back up again.
Enjoy!
Pro tip here: put some wax paper in a mold, (or use a nifty little silicon one if you have one) and put your leftover chocolate in it. Add nuts from your pantry (I chose cashews) mix them into the chocolate, and then melt in the microwave for about 20 seconds. Let it set, then remove from the mold, Voila! MORE keto candy!
Cornbread and beans was a childhood staple, actually I think my parents called it ham and beans, and sometimes the ham was mostly the bone. They would prepare it in a pressure cooker, and pour the juices, beans and bits of ham over a square of cornbread, and we would sprinkle Visalia onion pieces on top – it was delicious!
Today, I try and stay away from beans AND cornbread, as the beans can cause me a lot of GI discomfort, and cornbread, is well, bread and full of carbs!
However, with a bit of tweaking, this can become Keto friendly, and if white beans are used instead of red, then GI discomfort is substantially minimized – and beans although rich in carbohydrates (20gm/half cup) are also full of protein (7gm per half cup) and fiber (7gm/half cup) which can cancel out some of the carbs (making it 13gms/half cup). My recipe for the cornbread is an easy twist on whatever you find on the cornmeal carton you purchase – simply substitute Monkfruit for the sugar, almond flour for the All Purpose flour, and your carbs are cut into less than half of regular cornbread, and you can’t tell the difference!
6 EB XL eggs 1 cup + 2 Tbsp almond flour & 1/2 cup all-purpose flour 3/4 cup Lakanto Monk Fruit 3 Tablespoons Coconut Oil 2-1/4 tsp Xanthen Gum 1-1/2 tsp Baking Powder 1/2-3/4 tsp salt (Depending on your sensitivity to salt) 1 tsp Real Vanilla extract
1 tsp Lemon extract
1 Tablespoon Orange extract
2 Tablespoons Orange zest (grated Orange peel)
6 oz. fresh cranberries (1/2 pkg), chopped/puréed in a food processor
Although this is more of a Christmas time bread, if you think ahead and buy a bunch of bags of cranberries when they are available (like 12!) you can enjoy this year round. Actually, you might substitute low sugar Craisens for the cranberries and it tastes delicious! PLUS, there is an orange butter that is delicious to spread on top. (However, Craisens, even the lower sugar variety, are certainly NOT low carb.)
Just before placing in the oven
Orange Butter
1/2 cup butter or margarine softened
3 Tbsp confectioners sugar, and 3 Tbsp powdered Monk Fruit
2 tsp Orange zest OR 1 Tbsp frozen OJ concentrate (if you choose the OJ concentrate, you obviously have more carbs, and you may have to add more conf sugar or powdered Monk Fruit to thicken it) Slather this on a warm slice of bread, and you’ll be in Heaven!
Yum!
Carb content per slice (for 12 slices) is about: 7.5
Carb content of the Orange Butter: 30gm for the whole thing, unless you use OJ. With the OJ concentrate that will bring it up to about 45gms. How many grams per serving is up to you!
My Celestial Creations 