Category Archives: Product Review

Breakfast & Brunch, Product Review, Recipes

Spring into Easter with Waffles!

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Happy Spring, Everyone…

Well, it’s spring in the morning and winter in the afternoon several days a week now. But at least we’re getting hints!

I haven’t posted a recipe this month even though I had wanted to do a St. Patrick’s Day one and totally missed. This is my birthday month and, to be honest, I haven’t cooked much at home. Birthday celebrations in this house run the whole month and I have lots of favorite restaurants. Not really beneficial to my weight stabilization, but oh, so delicious! I’m ready to hunker down and get the excess weight I put on this month off again. So this is a special waffle recipe for your Easter morning brunch. It’s so good and checks in at about 5 net carbs.

I’m also going to review and recommend King Arthur flour company’s Keto Wheat Pancake Mix. I used it to make pancakes and to make waffles. Wonderful flavor, and they rise better than any combination I have made with the various low carb flour products in my house. I like it so much, I’ve subscribed to it on Amazon so I have a regular delivery. I love it when new products make being on a low carb diet easier.

I also used my DASH griddle for the pancakes and the waffle maker for the waffles. Since these produce larger pancakes than the 3″ ones suggested on the King Arthur instructions, I only got 4 pancakes from 1 cup of flour instead of 6, so keep that in mind.

So, here’s my recipe for your Easter Sunday (or any day you chose) brunch Pecan Waffle.

Look at the rise on this waffle! It’s almost an inch thick and so delicious!

Keto Pecan Waffle

Ingredients:

1 cup King Arthur Keto Wheat Pancake Mix
1/4 cup Almond Flour
1/4 cup Unsweetened Almond Milk
1 Egg
1 teaspoon Sugar-free Sweetener
2 tablespoon Oil (Canola, Coconut, etc.)
1 teaspoon Vanilla Extract
2 tablespoons Pecans, chopped
4 slices of bacon, broken into pieces
Cooking Oil Spray

Instructions:

Begin heating your waffle iron.

In a medium bowl, add pancake mix, almond flour, sweetener, almond milk, vanilla, and egg and stir well until the wet ingredients are fully incorporated. You may need to add water to get the mix to where it is thick, but loose enough to spread over your waffle iron easily when you spoon it in. It’s thicker than cake batter, but thinner than bread dough.
If you like a thinner waffle, you can thin it more with water.

Stir in the pecans until they are distributed through the batter.

Lightly spray the preheated waffle iron with cooking spray. If you’re using a small waffle maker like the DASH one, you’ll need to spray before making each waffle. For a standard one that makes four sections, this recipe should make one large waffle. But if you have extra batter, spray whatever section you will be using to cook the rest.

Close the lid and cook as per the waffle maker’s instructions. For a DASH one, it is about two minutes. If you watch, you’ll see the steam coming out of the baker. When it quits steaming, it is about done. If the lid is reluctant to lift, give it a minute or so more. When the waffle is done, the lid will lift easily.

Put the waffle on your serving plate, then top with crumbled bacon and sugar-free Maple Syrup. Several are available in the grocery store. I used Mrs. Butterworth’s but other brands are equally as good.

Makes 4 servings.

Nutrition Information Per Serving:
Calories 297, Total Fat 24 g , Cholesterol 103 mg, Sodium 213 mg, Potassium 215 mg, Carbohydrates 11 g, Fiber 5.4 g, Sugars 1.8 g, Protein 13 g, Net Carbs 5.6 g

Note: Nutrition information is based on the ingredients I used in this recipe and my measurements. Although they are a close calculation, your results may be slightly higher or lower. Ingredient substitutions may affect the carb count. Different brands may have other carb counts.

All opinions I make on products are my own evaluations and I am not given a free product or paid by the company in any way. 

Desserts, Product Review, Recipes

Product Review and a Recipe

To start the year off, I’m doing a review of Good Dee’s Butter Pecan cookies mix. Then, I’ll give you a recipe for making these without a mix.

image: package mixFirst up, I ordered the Good Dee’s mix when it was on sale at Amazon for $7.95 so I could evaluate it. The regular price is $12.99, which is about what most of the various mixes from the company are.

For the mix, you need to add melted butter, egg, and vanilla to the package contents and stir. Easy to do, the dough is done in a short time. Line a baking pan with parchment paper, then use a tablespoon to make 1 inch balls and flatten to about 1/4 inch thick.

Bake them for 10 to 15 minutes at 350 degrees and you have one dozen cookies.

I made these exactly as stated on the package except I made the balls a little large by using a regular tablespoon instead of a measuring spoon and only got 10 cookies. When I took them out of the oven, they looked like this:

image Good Dee's Butter Pecan Cookies

Not quite the same as the picture. But the flavor is delicious, so rich with the butter they almost melt in your mouth.

So, for the ease of making and the taste, I give them high marks. For the sprawled out cookie result and the price, I’m handing them a lower mark. I think it’s too much to pay for 12 cookies.

But if you want an easy-to-make cookie, they’ll do fine. Here’s a hint though, put the raw cookies on the pan in the refrigerator for about 30 minutes. This will help to keep them from spreading in the oven and make them a more compact cookie like the ones I made with my recipe.

From Scratch Cookies

Like the cookie mix, these cookies are made with almond flour. Where the mix used oat flour, this recipe uses coconut flour. The extra pecan halves used for decoration are optional.

Flavor-wise, these cookies are just as good as the mix although they are a little more work to make. But you get 24 cookies from the recipe for less money than the mix. Swerve’s sugar combination works best with this recipe.

Image: From scratch cookies

Low Carb Butter Pecan Cookies

½ cup unsalted Butter, softened
½ cup Swerve Sweetener
1 Egg
1-3/4 cups Almond Flour
2 tablespoon Coconut Flour
½ teaspoon Vanilla Extract
½ teaspoon Salt
½ cup chopped Pecans
24 Pecan halves (optional)

Line two standard baking sheets with parchment paper.

In a large bowl, beat the butter and sweetener together until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes. Add the egg and vanilla extract and beat to combine.

In a small bowl, add almond flour, coconut flour, and salt and whisk together. Beat 1 cup of the flour mixture into the butter mixture until it’s combined. Add the rest of the flour mix and beat to combine. Stir in the chopped pecans.

Use about a tablespoon of dough and roll it into a 1-inch ball and place a few inches apart on the prepared baking sheets. Repeat until all the dough is used. Flatten each ball to about 1/4-inch thick with the back of a spoon or your palm.

Put pans in the refrigerator to chill for about 30 minutes.

15 minutes before pulling the cookies from the refrigerator, set the oven to heat to 325 degrees F.

Take the cookies from the ‘fridge and press a pecan half into the center of each cookie.

When oven is up to temperature, bake 15 to 18 minutes until the edges look golden brown.

Image: Cookies

Remove to a towel or pad-covered counter or set the pans on cooling racks and let cool completely. Store in Zip-lock bags on the counter for up to 4 days. Put extras in the refrigerator if they last longer than 4 days.

Makes 24 cookies.

By the way, if you don’t like pecans, you can substitute other nuts into the recipe. Some of the nut carb counts might differ slightly, but they will be close.

Image: Nutrition Info

 

Breads, Product Review

Bread is the Word

Hey, guys, we all love bread, don’t we?  Especially when it comes to French toast and sandwiches. Low carb bread has been a challenge for years. I actually have a pretty tasty bread roll recipe and it’s great for burgers and other sandwiches. While it makes a nice small loaf, it doesn’t rise as high as I’d like. And it’s not white bread, but more like a wheat one.

With the upswing in Keto as a diet, everyone has gone Keto-happy, which is good news for all low carb eaters and diabetics. Many more products are coming on the market to help us keep our carbs down. Today, I’m going to talk about two of those products.

Scotty's Keto BreadThe first is Scotty’s Zero Carb White Bread mix. At $12.95 for a package to make one loaf, it is a little pricy. I bought it and made it up according to directions. This is a yeast bread and you add your own while mixing, put it in the bread pan, and let it rise for two hours. Then you bake it and get a nicely browned white bread loaf.

I followed the directions, put it in a small loaf pan, and let it rise. It didn’t make a very tall loaf, about three inches high, and not nearly as tall as the one of the package. See for yourself.

Scott's bread backed from mix

The actual dough is weird, sticky and stretchy, but not like regular bread. You put it in the pan and smooth the top as much as you can. The end result is a nicely formed loaf with good texture. It tastes okay, but seems like it’s missing something in the flavor. Now, I admit, it’s been a long time since I last ate white bread, but I think it had more flavor than this did.

French ToastI did make French toast with it, but it didn’t absorb the liquid very well, so it lacked the flavor you expect.

Overall, I rate it about three spoons. It’s passable, but not worth the asking price.

Pre-made White Bread

Franz H

The second bread is also white bread, but this one is already baked for you. You can get hamburger and hot dog buns as well. This is Franz Keto White and it looks, smells, and tastes like white bread, I believe. Like I said, long time since I tasted regular white bread. Not only does this look and taste like bread, but it toasts, makes French toast and other food that requires bread. Good for a grilled cheese sandwich also.

French toast made with Franz Keto Bread
Toad-in-a-Hole (American version) made with Franz Keto Bread,

 

 

 

 

 

The buns are perfect for regular burgers and hot dogs or sausages. I also use them for sandwiches sometimes. The regular bread is standard size and zero net carbs. Hard to beat that!

At $26 for a two-loaf pack, they aren’t inexpensive, but it includes shipping and has about 17 slices of bread per pack. The bread can be frozen and thawed as needed. Let’s face it, anything with Keto on it is going to cost. This is my choice for white bread.

The hamburger and hot dog buns also come in two-packs for about the same price. Each pack has eight buns in it. Each bun has 1 net carb. Hard to beat.

I rank these at five spoons out of five. They’re that good.

One other note. While these products are high priced compared to regular bread, they are specialty breads. I figured out how much it costs me to make six low-carb rolls from scratch from my recipe and it comes out to about $8.50 a batch, and I use several different flour ingredients in it. To make a loaf about the size of the Keto White Bread would use double the amount of ingredients, so about $17.

My reviews reflect my opinion of the product. I am not receiving any rewards, payment, or product for reviewing. I bought the products and am leaving my honest review.

 

Product Review

Product Review: King Arthur Carb-Conscious Pancake Mix

Photo: King Arthur Carb-Conscious Pancakes

King Arthur Flour  has a great flour product, so I was eager to try their Carb-Conscious Pancake Mix. I usually make my own batter from the low-carb flour products I have at home, but I wanted to see how this mix compares. It doesn’t.

While it is super-easy to mix up, simply measure out one cup of the mix and add 1/2 cup water. If the mixture is too thick, as mine was, add water 1 tablespoon at a time to bring it to a spreadable consistency. I live at 4,500 feet above sea level, and this sometimes affects baking. It took almost another 1/4 cup of water to get the batter thin enough to spread on my trusty waffle iron.

My iron has made hundreds of waffles over the years I’ve had it, and most of my batters have been low carb. I’ve made regular waffles and savory waffles, but I’ve never had a waffle stick to the iron…until now. I did spray the iron with baking spray before pouring the batter, in case you’re wondering.

The waffle cooked longer than a usual waffle. Since I could still detect steam coming from the iron, I let it continue to cook. Once the steam had stopped, the iron still did not want to release the waffle. I finally had to force it. The waffle was completely cooked, but it stuck to both sides of the iron.

Photo:Crumbled waffle

Once the iron had cooled some, I extracted the pieces adhered to the non-stick surface. So, I had the cake in many pieces on the plate. Nothing else wrong with it, except it was a mess.

Nonetheless, I buttered it, added sugar-free syrup, and ate it. It tasted okay but lacked a little in flavor. My recipe is much more flavorful. Like many low carb flour products, the Carb-Conscious product doesn’t have as much flavor as the real deal.

Photo: Waffle with apples.
To dress up the waffle pieces, I added a compote of cooked apples with cinnamon. Big improvement.

The next time I used it, I made pancakes. 1/4 cup of the flour plus about 1/3 cup of water makes three cakes. I added 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract to the batter to add flavor. They worked fine, browned up nicely, and tasted okay. Still not as flavorful as they could be. If you add cinnamon along with the vanilla, you might get a better pancake.

Bottom line. The mix comes together easily but lacks flavor compared to a homemade mix or some other low-carb mixes. I’d give it three spoons – not the best, but okay if you add a little spice to it.

Nutrition information indicates that two pancakes use 1/3 cup of mix to make and contain 4 net carbs.

Try my pancake recipe. This one is for Pumpkin Pancakes.

This evaluation is the first of several low-carb or Keto flour mixes or products I will be reviewing this week. Keep an eye out for more as I try the goods and report back to you, so you don’t have to waste money on those that aren’t up to the flavor.

I will also be getting to the promised tiropitas recipe this week.

Please note: I am not receiving anything from the makers of the products I review. I purchase the item, make it when needed, and give it my honest review. The opinions expressed are mine. Other people may have different thoughts on the product.

Product Review

Product Review: Natural Heaven Hearts of Palm Spaghetti

For people on a low-carb diet, pasta is often a banned or use-very-seldom food. Over the years, low carb and Keto practitioners have found several substitutes for the popular starch. What is Italian food without it? Asian food also uses a starch noodle, frequently made from rice, but also flour, in many of their dishes.

So, we’ve turned to cauliflower to substitute for macaroni, rice, and potatoes in our meals. It does an admirable job most of the time. Likewise, spaghetti squash, zucchini, and butternut squash have helped fill the void when you don’t eat pasta. Some companies are even developing low carb pasta from carb-reduced flour. More on those another time.

When I first saw an ad for Natural Heaven’s Hearts of Palm pasta, I did a double-take. But I ordered three varieties to try. The hearts of palm spaghetti comes in a sealed package, ready-to-use. Each package provides two-and-a-half servings. I always wonder about that odd packaging, but I’m guessing the producers look more at weight than servings when they package. For the record, this is 9 oz. of pasta. Each serving is 1/2 cup. The key nutrition values per serving are: calories=25, sodium=19mg, carbohydrates=4g, dietary fiber=2g, and protein=1g. The net carbs per serving=2g. That’s a great number!

Palm core or heart.
Photo By mhoenig – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=29408125

These palms are harvested and prepared in Ecuador in a sustainable manner. They insure three stems grow replacing each one cut. The core of the palm stem is the heart, which can be cut, cooked, and eaten.

Hearts of Palm Spaghetti with Meatballs

Now to the taste test. I made a quick throw-together spaghetti using 1/2 cup of premade pasta sauce and premade mozzarella-sausage meatballs from the grocery. I pan cooked and slightly over-browned the meatballs, then broke them into smaller pieces. I added the pasta sauce and a little water and cooked the meatballs for about five minutes in the sauce.

Then I opened the pasta and slid it into the pan, carefully separating the strands with a spoon, so I didn’t break too many. The pasta is moist but doesn’t need to be drained before using.

Following the directions on the container, I turned my stove’s heat to medium and let it cook another four minutes, often stirring, to heat the pasta. Following my tradition, I sampled one noodle. It tasted similar to a regular strand, and the texture is like al dente pasta.

Once I served the dish, I added Parmesan cheese on top and a side salad and had a very tasty meal served on my fancy paper plates. It is very much like regular spaghetti with the sauce and cheese since most of the flavor comes from the sauce ingredients.

Bottom line, it’s a very good substitute for spaghetti in texture, color, and taste. Be adventurous and try it with your favorite spaghetti ingredients.

Cost-wise, at $4.99 a package through Netrition.com, it’s not too expensive. But given that it’s only 2-1/2 servings, it’s certainly higher than a spaghetti squash or a couple of zucchinis. Still, when you want a more authentic looking and tasting pasta, it’s worth it.