Recently, my roommate canned a couple of dozen jars of sugar-free cherries and we opened one to see how they tasted before giving them to anyone. She also did a cherry jam that was delicious and also sugar-free. We tried that on low carb ice cream with chocolate. It tasted great, but it got me thinking about a Black Forest chocolate cake.
So, I decided to use my flaugnarde recipe as a base and turn it into a Black Forest tart with a kind of pudding filling. The result was really tasty and I think you might enjoy trying it. Because it used cherries, it’s not the lowest carb dish you could make and it would probably work equally as well with raspberries, but then it wouldn’t be Black Forest, would it?
This could make a simple, but delicious special dessert during the holidays. And check out some of the other holiday dessert recipes I’ve listed below. Happy Holidays to all!
Black Forest Flaugnarde
This is a variation on the traditional flaugnarde recipe that uses chocolate, cream, and eggs in it to produce a pudding-like center in the dish. I make it in individual soufflé cups for easy serving. The recipe is simple and almost fool proof.
1 Egg
3 tablespoons Heavy Cream plus 2 tablespoons Water
OR 5 tablespoons Unsweetened Almond or Coconut Milk
2 tablespoons Sugar Substitute
1 tablespoon Butter, softened or Baking Spray
1 tablespoon Unsweetened Cocoa Powder
Pinch of Salt
2 tablespoons Low Carb Flour (baking mix or almond flour)
6 whole cherries, cut in half or Sugar-Free Cherry Jam*
2 tablespoon Sugar-free Chocolate Chips or 1 serving of sugar free chocolate candy broken into pieces and divided.
*If you’re using cherry jam, use only 1 tablespoon Sugar Substitute.
Preheat oven to 385 degrees (F.) Butter or spray two 1/2 cup soufflé cups from bottom to top. Set aside.
In a small bowl, mix the eggs, cream and water or milk, and sugar substitute using a small spatula. Add the cocoa powder and flour and mix together.
In the bottom of the souffle cups, put 1/2 the cherries and 1/2 the chocolate chips in each. Spoon 1/2 the egg and flour mixture into each cup. They will be almost full, but leave a little room at the top. They will rise in the oven and if there is too much, they will overflow.
Bake for 20 to 30 minutes until the top looks dry and looks done. With chocolate, it can be hard to tell but it will not look glossy. Remove from the oven and let cool about 10 minutes, then serve with a dollop or whipped cream or whipped topping.
Makes 2 servings.
Nutrition Information per serving: Calories: 294 Fat: 25.1 g Net Carbs: 6.8 g Protein: 6.4 g
Try these delicious and low carb recipes to sweeten up your holidays. (Click on image to go to recipe page.) Many more are on these pages. Check out the cookies!
Cranberry Almond CoffeecakePistachio CheesecakeMaple Pecan Pumpkin PIe
One of the coolest low carb snacks on the planet is the Parmesan cheese crisp and they are pretty simple to make. I’ve done it several times, but even though they are crisp and super tasty, they do not compare to the ones in this package that the roomie picked up at Sam’s Club this past weekend. These crisps are so good that it’s like eating potato chips — hard to stop!
They are a little over an inch in diameter and salted to perfection.
Patti picked up the Original flavor, but according to the company’s web site, they also come in Sesame and Jalapeno. We will have to be on the lookout for those. While Patti paid about $11 for a 9.5 ounce bag of them that has about 15 servings, the other outlets I’ve checked like Amazon and Netrition are about double that, but they do also have the smaller containers and single serving bags. However, even though they are pricey, the best value is in the larger bag.
Made with real Parmesan cheese and seasonings, the crisps are crunch and thicker than the ones I’ve made. They’re a great potato chip substitute and they go well with soups and salads as well as being dip-able. The biggest problem is the desire to keep eating. At only 100 calories and 0 net carbs in 15, they are a very sensible snack. The biggest drawback is probably that price tag, but I don’t know if I could buy the Parmesan and make an equivalent amount of snacks (about 225 little crackers) for the same price and have them come out as tasty.
So, give them a try if you get a chance and let me know what you think about this tasty snack.
That’s a question I’ve been asked many times at the grocery store check out stand from either customers or the clerk when I’ve bought a couple of unusual vegetables. While not uncommon or even unknown in the United States, they are odd-looking and often overlooked by shoppers. I am speaking of kohlrabi and celery root, two very delicious vegetables that can add a different flair to your dinner while coming in at a lower calorie and carbohydrate count than a potato, pasta, or rice.
So, I’m on a mission to introduce more people to these tasty but lesser known edibles.
To be honest, I didn’t discover them until the past few years when I started changing over to a low carb lifestyle to manage my weight. A friend in Europe told me about kohlrabi and while picking one up at the store, I was curious about celery root. Both vegetables are peculiar-looking, but the flavor they hide is wonderful.
Both the leaves and the vegetable on a kohlrabi plant are edible. These are a winter crop and can be found in the markets around February until the middle of summer, depending on where you are.
Kohlrabi is a cousin of broccoli and if you like the taste of that vegetable’s stem, then imagine it in a milder version and you have the taste of kohlrabi. It looks like an alien plant when you see it with the leaves attached as the stems come out from all over the round vegetable. The leaves are also good to cook and eat along with other greens.
Most often, it seems people who use kohlrabi grate or chop it to add to salads. However, it is wonderful when cooked. I make kohlrabi fries just as I would potato ones. You can also boil it into a mash with other vegetables, steam it, roast it, or turn it into a scalloped dish. It works best for these dishes when precooked a little to speed up the cooking time. You can also par-boil and freeze it.
Celery root is usually sold by the root. Look for the larger ones to get more value.
Now, celery root looks like a big, ugly lump when you see it in the store. It’s a gnarly-looking root. This is not your usual garden celery, but the celeriac root. The taste of it has a hint of celery, but it isn’t very strong. Once you peel off the exterior and clean it up, the meat is versatile. You can use it almost any way you use a potato. In fact, if you wash it up well, cut it in half and bake it, it makes a great substitute for a baked potato. Just don’t eat the skin.Texture-wise, it’s the only substitute vegetable I’ve found, apart from other potato family ones, that is like a potato when baked. It makes fabulous plank fries and goes well in soups.
I’ve also added turnips to my meal plans, finding that turnips and cauliflower mashed together with butter and cream made a great-tasting substitute for mashed potatoes. Cauliflower flowerets along with diced turnips, kohlrabi, or celery root can make a great-tasting macaroni-free cheese dish.
Apart from changing up the usual starches at dinner, these options are also lower in calories and carbs. If you’re wanting to cut back a little, try one of these vegetables for a change.
Take a look at the differences in nutrition:
Kohlrabi – per 1/2 cup: 18 calories 4.2 grams carbohydrates 2.5 g fiber 1.2 g protein
Celery root – per 1/2 cup 33 calories 7.2 g carbohydrates 1.3 fiber 1.2 protein
Turnips – per 1/2 cup 18.2 calories 4.2 g carbohydrates 1.2 g fiber 0.6 gr protein
Potatoes – per 1/2 cup: 51.8 calories, 11.8 g carbohydrates 1.8 g fiber 1.3 g protein
Have you tried kohlrabi or celery root? If so, how did you use them and what did you think?
At this time of year especially, when there are holiday parties, dinner invitations, and family get-togethers, it becomes a challenge to maintain your low carb plan, or any diet plan for that matter. Temptation is everywhere. It’s not easy to avoid eating food that looks so delicious and tastes so wonderful, but you can exert some self-control and minimize the damage.
Believe me, I know about this. For the past six years, I have fought this battle over and over. I lost 142 lbs (for about the fifth time in my life) on a low carbohydrate life-style change. Anytime you go out to eat, there is a challenge to not exceed your effective carb count and mine is a ridiculously low one at 22 net carbs per day. Restaurant food can be filled with hidden carbs in the form of sauces, sugar, and other unknown factors. Most spices are either zero carbs or fractional. But dining is also a social occasion so you can’t always avoid it.
Here’s five things you can do to stick to the plan when eating out.
Bread Rolls – By Taken byfir0002 | flagstaffotos.com.auCanon 20D + Tamron 28-75mm f/2.8 – Own work, GFDL 1.2, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=163135
1. Say No to bread
If you’re like me, this is not an easy one when the temptation of wonderful breads like the brown bread at Outback or the cheddar cheese biscuits at Red Lobster tease you from right on your table. Do what I do when I first walk into Texas Roadhouse and say, “No rolls, please,” as soon as your server reaches for that basket of tempting yeast rolls. Say none when asked what kind of bread you’d like when it’s included with the meal.
If you’re dining with others, this is not as easy to accomplish and that’s where your will power has to come in to keep the bread basket away form your reach. Don’t hesitate to tell your dining companions that you don’t want to eat the bread and ask them to keep it away.
If you just can’t help yourself, limit the damage. Eat a half a roll or just take a small slice. Sometimes that is more difficult than saying no, but if you take the time to savor the bread and eat it slowly, it can be satisfying.
2. Swap the vegetables
Most places are willing to substitute a different vegetable for the one listed on the menu.
Potatoes, rice, and pasta are high in carbohydrates, which adds a lot to the meal when you are counting carbs. They are also high in calories. As for a different vegetable that they offer, such as green beans, broccoli, cauliflower or mixed squash. This makes a big difference and keeps you on track.
I’ve only run into a couple of places where the chefs are so fussy that they refuse to change out their selected choice. In that case, choose a different dish.
Often when ordering breakfast, I say “no bread, no potatoes” and the restaurant usually offers a substitution such as sliced tomatoes or fresh fruit. When going for the fruit, ask if it is berries and/or melons as they are the lowest options in carbs.
Broccoli is a great substitution for potatoes or rice. Photo by By Quadell – Self-published work by Quadell, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=65964
3. Choose simple protein dishes
Dinners that are primarily meat, poultry, or fish are your best bet for a dinner that doesn’t have hidden carbs or calories. Grilled meat is one of the best way to avoid many additions and the meat is usually just seasoned without any extras. BBQ sauce adds carbs and calories, so you want to avoid the sauces. Low carb has an advantage when it comes to a butter sauce since most don’t add any carbs to the count unless it has a little lemon or other flavoring in it. Don’t hesitate to ask your server what the ingredients are in the sauces.
4. Buffets can be your friend
While they can be very tempting and this requires quite a bit of will power, a buffet offers many choices in salads, vegetables, and protein dishes to give you a quite a bit of freedom to create a variety of dishes. Once again, stay away from the starches and dishes with sauces that might include flour or sugar. Select ones that have a butter sauce. Pick some pieces of cheese from the cheese tray to add to the broccoli, if you wish, rather than going for a casserole-type dish that includes flour and possibly bread crumbs in the sauce. In most cases, stay away from the desserts.
A few buffets in my town (Reno, Nevada) do offer a a small selection of sugar-free desserts, but that doesn’t always equal low carb. Cheesecake is usually a safe bet so long as you don’t eat the cookie base, which is usually made with flour. I know one place that makes it with almond flour. Top the cheesecake with fresh, unsweetened berries and you have a great low carb dessert.
5. Eat half of what you’re served
Be honest, now. When you go out to dinner at most places, doesn’t that plate arrive with more than double the food you normally eat at home for a meal?
Most restaurants are generous with their proportions and for many of us, it’s easy to keep right on eating after we are full. I did this for many years before I decided that being overfilled was not good. Ask for a to-go box when you order and put half of your meal in the box before you even begin. Or, cut your portions in half and slide them over a little on the plate to remind yourself to save that to take home. Not only do you cut back on your food intake, but you gain an extra meal for the same price.
Sometimes, no matter what your best intentions are, you just can’t pass up that absolutely amazing-looking dessert or that incredible chicken dish with a thick,rich sauce. It happens and you can’t beat yourself up for giving in to the temptation. The key then is to get right back on track with your diet plan the next day and continue to wage the battle to keep the extra pounds from coming on-board.
Happy Holidays to everyone and make good food choices.
Banner photo by Mark Miller (Own work) [CC BY 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
As we prepare to celebrate Thanksgiving in the USA, I want to send my best wishes to everyone around the world for a wonderful start to the winter holiday season. It’s a time to be thankful for what we have, to be generous and considerate to others, and wouldn’t it be wonderful if that extended all year?
Maybe we need more good food in our lives to spread the cheer and that’s why my cookbooks are going on sale from now until December 31, 2016. During this time, you can purchase the e-book versions from Smashwords using the following coupons:
Delicious holiday dessert recipes for any occasion and all low carb. Satisfy you sweet tooth without popping the snaps on your jeans. Use coupon: WS39J to get it for just 99 cents.
A collection of low carb recipes that you can prepare in two person batches so you’re not struck with leftovers for days. I’ve had a lot of practice with these delicious recipes that cover the day from breakfast through dinner. Use coupon KC73L to get it for just $1.29.
May there be happiness in your home and in your heart and may there always be good food on your table. Happy Thanksgiving!
