Coconut Fruit Pops

Tristan is meant to have a snack or dessert every day, so it's good to have something easy around.  Frozen treats are also good since its getting quite hot these days!  Pictured here are two flavors of coconut fruit pops, lime and raspberry.  I use frozen raspberries, again for convenience, and the nutritional values are based on those printed on my frozen raspberry bag from Carrefour.


Ingredients:

Coconut Lime Pops

60 g coconut cream (blue dragon)

18 g lime juice

2 g coconut oil

4 drops liquid stevia

Raspberry Coconut Pops

60 g coconut cream (blue dragon)

24 g frozen raspberries

3 drops liquid stevia

In the case of the lime pops, the ingredients only need to be stirred together and poured in popsicle containers which can hold at least 80 mL of liquid.  Be warned, these pops are very lime-y so decrease the lime juice if you don't enjoy sour sweets.

fat:  13.5 g, protein:  2.1 g, carbs:  2.5 g

ratio:  2.9:1

For the raspberry pops, combine ingredients in a blender and pour.  It's better to use slightly bigger pops if you can find them.  The consistency is quite like a very thick smoothie or milkshake, so another alternative way of serving would be as a frozen drink.

fat:  11.8 g, protein:  2.3 g, carbs:  2.5 g

ratio: 2.5:1

Variations:  I've also made a strawberry version, and I'm sure lemon or blackberry would work too (or combinations?) depending on what fruits you like!

Chocolate!

I love chocolate. Everyone does.

Well, I suppose Samantha doesn't. She likens its taste to that of 'burnt dirt', a flavour we are of course all familiar with.

Unfortunately for me though, normal person chocolate contains way too much sugar for someone on my diet, so while on the road I was without the dirty burnt tasting goodness for months.

Once settled in one place, we searched the web and found some stevia and erythritol-sweetened chocolate made by New York based Lucienne's.

Stevia, produced from the leaves of the stevia plant, is a carb-free sweetener in its pure form.  Erythritol has only about 1/20th the carbs of sugar and is therefore not too shabby either. Chocolate itself is not devoid of carbohydrate, so no bar will never be carb-free, however as a rule, the darker the chocolate (these are 83%) the less carbs it will contain.

Based on our estimations, each square has 0.5 g carb, 0.5 g protein and 2 g fat, adding up to a decent 2:1 ratio. Most importantly though, despite being a bit more bitter than what I would usually choose, all three flavours (mint, orange, regular) are really, really tasty, with orange currently the marginal favourite. The cocoa content is high, but you tend to appreciate a more intense chocolate hit when you're only allowed a couple of squares every few days!

Stevia has been slow to enter the European market, so these or similar chocolates are relatively hard to find over here, with shipping from the US tending to be on the expensive side. Luckily, Samantha seem to have her eye on a bag of cocoa butter at the local health food shop, so with my Lucienne's supplies running short I'm hoping we'll see a chocolate bar recipe on here sometime soon.

Cinnamon Crepes with Whipped Cream

I had been promising Tristan pancakes after we bought some Walden Farms pancake syrup (our only successful purchase that day which I shall leave to Tristan to blog about). My intent was to make American style pancakes, or try to, but in a moment of unprepared desperation, I settled for a simpler crepe recipe I nicked off the Internet.

It wasn't strictly keto by our standards, so after a little trial and error, I got a sweet breakfast or an equally nice dessert. It's low on protein, so if its breakfast it could be paired with a carbless, preferably fatty, protein or just the right breakfast before lunch at a steakhouse!

Ingredients:

53 g or 1 egg
28 g cream cheese
0.5 g cinnamon
10 g European butter
60 g 40% cream
5 g truvia
5 g pancake syrup

Microwave or otherwise heat cream cheese until soft and whip together with egg.

Add cinnamon to egg and cream cheese. This is quite a bit of cinnamon, so you could also reserve some to dust on top at the end.

Heat butter in nonstick skillet over medium-low heat.

Pour batter into skillet to desired size and flip when it looks firm enough to handle and bottom is lightly browning. I recommend roughly dividing in thirds to make 3 crepes.

Once they have all cooked, place in refrigerator to cool. This is necessary to prevent them from melting the whipped cream you now have time to make.

Combine cream and truvia and beat using an electric mixer until fluffy and spreadable but be wary of over beating. It is easier to make a larger batch of this which you can save for later sweet treats.

Layer your crepes and whipped cream with whipped cream spread between each crepe, reserving a dollop of whipped cream on top.

Last, lightly drizzle with the teaspoon of syrup.

Fat: 47.6 g, protein: 10 g, carb: 3.1

Ratio: 3.6:1

by Samantha

Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream

ice cream after a night in the freezer

Ice cream, emphasis on the cream, sounded like the perfect keto dessert, but as soon as I began to read up on it, I got worried.  As it turns out, regular ice cream is not made entirely from cream, and copious amounts of sugar are actually what give it its creaminess.  

I decided to give a shot anyway, and what a success!  It does freeze up quite hard but not impenetrable, and straight out of the ice cream maker it has a lovely soft-serve texture.

I had also read that because it can freeze up hard and quick, free standing ice cream makers just weren't up to the task.  It was no match, however, for the motor on my kitchenaid mixer with ice cream freezer attachment.  I highly recommend it if you're serious about making ice cream!

My first flavor choice was mint chocolate chip because I thought mint was the perfect mask for the aftertaste of sugar replacements.  The addition of chocolate contributes significant carbs, so a basic vanilla ice cream would drop the carb count even lower!  I have big plans for this ice cream making formula, so expect to see more in the future.

Ingredients:

480 g (2 cups) 40% heavy whipping cream

45 g truvia

5 g vanilla

60 g unsweetened almond milk

76 g (about 4) egg yolk
5 g pure mint extract

20 g coconut oil

7 g cocoa powder

Combine 1 cup cream, truvia, vanilla, and mint in a small saucepan and heat slowly on a low heat.

Combine remaining 1 cup cream and almond milk in a separate bowl.

In another separate bowl, whisk egg yolks.  Add steaming cream to the egg yolk in small amounts, whisking, to temper the eggs.  

Add tempered eggs to the saucepan, and cook the custard until it becomes thick and reaches about 160 F.

*If you are not an experienced custard maker (like me) you may end up with some bits of cooked egg in your custard.  Do not fret!  Take your custard off the heat, and pour through a strainer to remove the bits of cooked egg.  It is likely due to bits of egg white that made it in with your yolks.

Add reserved cream and almond milk to the cooked custard and refrigerate overnight to fully chill.

Pour into your ice cream maker as directed and remember that it will freeze up faster than normal ice cream.

To give it little flecks of chocolate, melt coconut oil and stir in cocoa powder to create a pourable chocolate syrup which you then drizzle into the ice cream maker near the end of the ice cream making process.

makes 7, 100 g servings:

fat:  33 g, protein:  3.3 g, carb:   2.9 g

ratio:  5.5:1

Tristan gets 85 g for dessert, and he says it is his favorite yet!

Edit:  I came back to this recipe to make more ice cream for Tristan, as he has been looking forward to this the whole trip, and I realized I forgot to include the mint!  Oops!