Tag: Low Carb Cooking

Peanut Butter & Chocolate Chip Cookies (Keto)

On By celestelindIn Crafting2 Comments

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

Thanks for stopping by! Enjoy!!

Low Carb PumpkinBread

On By celestelindIn Recipes2 Comments

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

1-1/2 tsp salt. 2 tsp baking soda. 1/2 tsp baking powder

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!!

Keto Cheeseburgers (with a Bun!)

On By celestelindIn Crafting, RecipesLeave a comment

Obviously, hamburger and cheese are keto, right? But sometimes you just want a BUN to put it in, you don’t want to eat it with a fork!! Gotcha covered! Cheesy chaffles to the rescue!

I’m sure some of you are well acquainted with chaffles, I personally have my peanut butter chaffles 5 mornings out of 7! But chaffles are not just for breakfast- we use them as bread in my house, and sometimes as dessert!

The pictures will tell the story, of course you want Sugar-free Ketchup or BBQ sauce, and whatever trimmings you enjoy.

Mix one XL EB egg with 1/2 cup of finely shredded cheddar cheese, and 2 tablespoons of almond flour. Pour 1/2 of the mixture into your mini waffle iron and cook. When it comes out, while the other one is cooking, you quickly sprinkle more cheddar cheese over your warm chaffle.

Then let it cool on a grate. When the second chaffle is done, let it cool as well – the almond flour will let it be stiffer than usual. Then just put it together!

That’s how I do it anyway——-

YUM!

Mushroom Quiche

On By celestelindIn RecipesLeave a comment

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!

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Eating Keto Is So Hard……Not!

On By celestelindIn RecipesLeave a comment

Had a sad and melancholy day, and don’t feel much like cooking. Without going into why I’m melancholy, we’ll focus on how I managed to have a nice dinner without really any effort at all.

Open freezer, and what are my choices? We’ve got those frozen Cordon Bleu things, which are ok, but I’m really not in the mood. Some flash frozen chicken tenders, but really, seems like I had chicken for lunch (like every day, but whatever), some of those little stuffed Wontons we found at Costco, and Register sausage.

Sausage it is, warm up in the skillet while I rummage around for something to go with it. We have some left over. Outage cheese from the lasagne I made yesterday, so that’s good. Also some mini apples. And lucky us, the avocados I bought on Friday, are perfect for eating now.

Look how easy that was! Not sure how many carbs are in a teeny tiny apple, but not much! Mission accomplished!

15 minutes until Dinner

On By celestelindIn Lifestyle, RecipesLeave a comment

Easy and quick is what I need after work! This is super fast, partly because of modern technology. The Minute rice (which has brown and red rice and quinoa for tons of fiber) takes 10 minutes in the microwave.

The chicken tenderloins are the flash frozen tenderloins you can pick up at any grocery store, and they thaw out super fast too. Just pan fry them with the Kickomann seasoning, or whatever you prefer, and a wee bit of olive oil.

The okra is a keto standby for us, again, easily sautéed in the skillet while cooking the chicken and rice.

And of course, any berries will do, but organic blackberries were on sale yesterday, so we have these.

15 minutes later, Voila it’s dinner!

Apricot Almond Dreams – A New Keto Thumbprint Cookie

On By celestelindIn RecipesLeave a comment

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.

Enjoy!!

Low Carb Orange Cranberry Bread

On By celestelindIn Contemplation, RecipesLeave a comment

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!

Pumpkin Bread – Lo Carb Style

On By celestelindIn RecipesLeave a comment

As per usual, the mainstays of my recipe include lots of eggs, Lakanto MonkFruit, and finely ground Almond flour. This recipe also requires Xanthen gum, which helps so much with our texture.

My favorite brands
This particular recipe has no nuts, no raisins or craisens. This is a LOW CARB Pumpkin bread. If you really want raisens in your bread, you will be seriously increasing the carb count. A cup of pecans or walnuts, chopped fine, would still be considered Keto, however, and increase your fiber intake.

For those of you who are just joining me, I am determined to lead a low carb lifestyle, without giving up my favorite foods. So I am modifying some of my favorite comfort foods (generally cookies, cake, sweet breads, lol) to be more Keto friendly.

These are fresh out of the oven,
I can almost smell it from here!!

The main caveat or takeaway is to remember that Keto Style baked goods need to be eaten quickly, as they will sink, and three days later, you won’t be interested in eating it any more.

See the texture on this slice, looks just like “normal” pumpkin bread, doesn’t it?! But for now, slather on the butter or cream cheese and enjoy!

Recipe:
6 eggs
2/3 cup butter flavored Crisco or coconut oil
1 cup Monk Fruit
1 cup Golden Monk Fruit
2/3 cup granulated sugar
1 can (16 oz) packed pumpkin
1/2 cup water
2 tsps baking soda
1-1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking powder
One Tbsp Xanthen Gum,
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp cloves
2 cups almond flour
1-1/3cups all purpose flour

Heat oven to 350°. Grease pans (9×5”), mix shortening, sweeteners, leavening, salt and spices. Add in pumpkin. Blend until smooth. Add water, and flour, almond flour, one cup at a time, and mix until smooth. Pour evenly into two pans and bake for 70 minutes at 350°. You can cut it after 20-30 minutes.

Remember to share!
Each loaf has about 13 slices, and each slice has about 25gms carbs each.
So, low carb, but not NO carb.
Be careful, it’s delicious!!

Daddy’s Cheesy Stuffed Green Peppers

On By celestelindIn CraftingLeave a comment

I absolutely love stuffed green peppers, and they are naturally low carb! I think a lot of what helps make this meal perfect for keto, is the color – very appealing- and your choice of side dishes. Note that I didn’t use Green peppers, but red and yellow. Also, “my way” might be a little different from yours, as I make the meat filling & cook it before adding it to the peppers. Once the meat is done, I place my pepper halves in a microwave safe dish, laden in my meat, and top with shredded cheese. Then I microwave it for about a minute – this leaves the peppers crisp and crunchy, but also warms them.

In the first photo, we have a Spicy Arugula salad, and pickled okra (yes, I’m from the south!).

In he second photo, we have boiled zucchini, topped with Parmesan cheese, and two avocado quarters.

The recipe I use for the meat filling is very simple:

One pound ground beef

1 cup Creamed Cottage Cheese

One small Vidalia onion, diced fine

One Tbsp Worcestershire sauce

Two tsp salt (or less, depends on taste)

One EB egg

6-8 oz tomato sauce

I mix all these together and then bake in a meatloaf pan (they are slotted at the bottom to allow drainage of fat & other fluids) for about 15 minutes at 350. Then I remove from the oven, and stuff my peppers. Easy peasy! You probably could fill 3 large peppers (6 halves) with this, or maybe more. Remember to top the meat with your favorite shredded cheese before microwaving.

Enjoy!