Tag Archives: almond flour

Beef, Main Dish, Mexican/Spanish Recipes, Pork, Poultry, Recipes

Something Special for Cinco de Mayo

Leave a comment

Sopes with chicken and green sauce.

Mexican Sopes are the bomb!

I didn’t try Mexican Sopes until recently. Sure, I had the corn cakes at Cheesecake Factory and those are so delicious! They are more of a tamale mix than sopes are although the both use masa. But they are equally high in carbohydrate’s. So, I decided to try to make a similar-tasting one from low carb ingredients. I tried a couple of different recipes I found from other Keto sites, but they didn’t quite do it.

Ultimately, I came up with my own recipe for sopes using a combination of flours and Mozzarella cheese. Yes, cheese. The Mozzarella melts well, has a very mild flavor, and helps the flour ingredients hold together. For this, I used CarbQuik, a biscuit combination flour that works well. I added a little corn meal to get the corn flavor into it, but if you want to lower the carbs a little more, you can leave it out and add 2 more tablespoons of flax meal or almond flour. The flax helps with the texture and adds a golden color. Adding in taco seasoning brings more flavor to the mix. If you prefer, just add a little salt and a bit of garlic powder.

Although the ingredients are low carb, a sope still comes out to 8 grams of carbs, but if you have a low threshold, plan for your higher carb dinner by eating really low carb the rest of the day. I find two sopes are a good dinner meal, but if you add a side salad, you can get by with one.

The fillings also affect the carbs, so use cheese and meat, chicken, or fish with a salsa or low carb sauce. Feel free to top with a bit of sour cream or chopped lettuce and sliced radishes.

Give it a try for Cinco de Mayo!

Mexican-style Sopes

1/3 cup Almond Flour
2 tablespoons Corn Meal
1/3 cup Low Carb Flour
1/3 cup Golden Flax Meal
1 tablespoon Lard
1/3 cup Mozzarella Cheese, shredded
1/4 teaspoon Taco Seasoning
1/4 to 1/3 cup water

Mix the ingredients, except the water together and cut with your clean fingers until it forms crumbles. Add 1/4 cup water and mx together with your hands. The dough will begin to pull together to form a ball. If the mix isn’t adhering together well, add more water, 1 tablespoon at a time, until it forms a smooth, but not wet ball. Roll into a log about 4 inches long. Cut in half.

Form the 1st half into a 3″ circle about 1 thick. Smooth the top and sides and make it as even as possible. Repeat with the second piece of dough.

Two balls, flattened and cooked on both sides long enough to lightly brown, but not cook through.

Heat a griddle or heavy skillet over medium high heat until it is hot. Place each rounded ball into the griddle and cook for about 1-1/2 to 2 minutes until it is lightly browned. Flip and repeat on the other side. Remove dough patties to a work surface. Carefully cut each one across the middle of the 1″ side, like you would split an English muffin. The dough in the center will be raw, so cut carefully.

Press down the bottom and pinch the sides to form a ring around the top.

With the doughy side up, push down the middle of the sope and use your fingers to pinch the edges to a 1/2 inch wall around the middle. It’s easier to use the pointer finger on each hand to shape this. If it cracks, pinch it closed. This is like forming the top edge with pie dough. Push the center down more if needed, then use a finger to push the bottom of the edging to be even with the base.

If you are not cooking right away, cover the sopes with plastic wrap and refrigerate until you are ready to cook.

You can cook the sopes in hot oil and it will take about 4 minutes to get them completely done. Or you can cook them in a hot oven or air fryer. If you do that, spray with oil or cooking spray and cook until they are browned and cooked through. This will take about 10 to 15 minutes at 375 degrees.

Fill with your favorite fillings and serve with salsa if you like.

Makes 4 sopes.

Nutrition Information per Sope:
Calories 390 , Total Fat 32 g , Cholesterol 12 mg, Sodium 45 mg, Potassium 312 mg, Carbohydrates 18 g, Fiber 10 g, Sugars 1.3 g, Protein 14 g, Net Carbs 8 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.

Breads, Breakfast & Brunch, Recipes

Fall into Applesauce Scones

Applesauce Scones with craisings

Happy September, y’all.  (That’s my Texas roots showing.) We’re entering the last third of the year. Can you believe it? It seems like the time flew by although the summer heat in the northern hemisphere was something I’d rather avoid. But cooler temps are coming in over the next few days and it’s time to think about fall flavors.

I ran across this quick and easy scone recipe on AllRecipes.com and decided to adjust it to a low carb version. With the change in flour and other adjustments, it doesn’t resemble the base recipe much. One big change was using pecan flour in it.

I bought a bag of Fisher Nuts product and was delighted to see it is a zero-carb flour. Now, it isn’t great for everything you want to bake and it does have a nut grittiness to it. But for scones and some bread, it is a nice addition to the recipe. In this recipe, I used it for the larger flour amount and used almond flour for the rest.

The recipe has a variation on it using NuTrail Keto Granola in Cinnamon Pecan. More about that after the recipe. Also, both the craisins and pecans in this scone are optional. If you want to lower the net carb count, leave out the craisins or both. The pecans add very little to the count, but if you don’t like them, leave them out. If you can’t eat nuts, this recipe can be made with any low carb flour, such as Carbquik or DCC All Purpose Flour, that is not nut based.

Applesauce Scones with Pecans and Craisins

1 cup plus 2 tablespoons Carbquik or other low carb baking mix
1/2 cup Almond Flour
2/3 cup Pecan Flour
1/2 teaspoon Baking Powder
1/4 teaspoon Baking Soda
1 tablespoon Butter
1/4 cup Sugar Substitute
1 3.5-ounce container Unsweetened Applesauce
1 Egg, beaten
1 tablespoon Heavy Cream
1 teaspoon Cinnamon
1/3 cup Pecans, broken into pieces
1/3 cup Sugar-reduced Craisins

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees (F.) Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

In a medium bowl, mix the almond flour, pecan flour, baking powder, and baking soda. Slice butter into pieces and cut it into the dry ingredients until you have a crumbly mixture. Add the sugar substitute, applesauce, egg, cinnamon, and cream. Stir to mix the ingredients until all are incorporated. Do not over mix. Fold in craisins and pecans.

Scoop dough into 8 balls, place on prepared baking sheet, and press down gently. Pat the outer edges smooth. If desired, brush tops with additional heavy cream and sprinkle granulated sugar substitute over the top. Let sit on the counter for 30 minutes before baking.

Bake on the middle rack for 12-15 minutes. Serve warm with butter or clotted cream.

Makes 8 scones.

Note: Substituting pumpkin puree is 6.4 net carbs versus 6.6 net carbs for the applesauce.

The variation is almost the same. But in place of pecans, you use 1/4 cup of the Keto Granola Mix. (I purchased this at Sam’s Club. It also makes a very nice cereal for breakfast.) I used fewer craisins in this version, reducing the carbs a little. The Keto mix includes sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, coconut chips, almonds, pecans, butter, cinnamon, and is sweetened with a monk fruit and erythritol blend, so I didn’t add any pecans. Again, you can eliminate the craisins and go with the granola.

The other variation is I used less of the pecan flour and used a low carb baking mix for the bulk of the flour.

Image: Applesauce scones with Keto Granola

Keto Granola Scones with Applesauce & Craisins

1 cup Carbquik or other low carb baking mix
1/2 cup Almond Flour
1/2 cup Pecan Flour
1/4 Keto Granola Mix (Sam’s Club)
1/2 teaspoon Baking Powder
1/4 teaspoon Baking Soda
2 tablespoon Butter
1/4 cup Sugar Substitute
1 3.5-ounce container Unsweetened Applesauce
1 Egg, beaten
1 tablespoon Unsweetened Coconut Milk
1/2 teaspoon Cinnamon
1/4 cup Sugar-reduced Craisins

Heat oven to 425 degrees (F.)  Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

Mix the low carb flour, almond flour, pecan flour, baking powder and baking soda in a bowl and add butter, broken into pieces. Cut the butter into the dry ingredients until you have a crumbly mixture. Add the sugar substitute, applesauce, egg, cinnamon, and cream. Stir to mix the ingredients until all are incorporated. Do not over mix. Fold in craisins and granola.

Inside view of sconeScoop dough into 8 balls, place on prepared baking sheet, and press down gently. Smooth the outer edges with wet fingers. If desired, brush tops with additional heavy cream and sprinkle granulated sugar substitute over the top. Let rest on the counter for 30 minutes to allow the baking soda to work and the dough to relax.

Bake on the middle rack for 12-15 minutes. Serve warm with butter or clotted cream.

Makes 8 scones.

Breakfast & Brunch, Desserts, Recipes

Refreshing Strawberry Coffee Cake

Strawberry coffee cake photo

I found this recipe while looking for something to do with the leftover strawberries aging in the ‘fridge. Although it calls for fresh strawberries, I had some I’d enhanced with sugar substitute to get juice, so I gave it a try. Since it was very moist, it needed to cook a little longer than 25 minutes.

The flavor is delicious; one of the best coffee cakes I’ve made. Adding a single serving pack of lemonade adds a refreshing tartness to the batter that goes well with the berries. It is tender and browns beautifully. I plan to try it with other fruits such as blueberries, raspberries, and cranberries. I think it would also work well with apples and peaches, but these are higher-carb’d fruits, so you might want to reduce the fruit to 1/2 cup for the cake.

Strawberry Coffee Cake

1/4 cup oil
1 Egg
1/3 cup Almond Milk
1 packet Sugar-free Lemonade Mix (Crystal Light or Wylers)
2 tablespoons Sour Cream
1 teaspoons Vanilla Extract
1 cup Almond Flour
1/4 cup Vanilla Protein Powder
1/4 cup DCV All-Purpose Flour or 2 tablespoons Coconut Flour
3/4 cups Sugar Substitute
2 teaspoons Baking Powder
1/2 teaspoon Salt
1/2 teaspoon Cinnamon
2/3 cup chopped Strawberries

Topping
1/2 cup Brown Sugar
2 tablespoons Almond Flour
2 teaspoons Cinnamon
2 tablespoons Butter, melted

Icing Drizzle
3/4 cup Swerve Powdered Sugar
1 tablespoon Unsweetened Almond Milk or Cream
1/2 teaspoon Vanilla Extract or Lemon Extract

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees and grease, or line with parchment paper, a 9″ circular cake pan, or an 8×8 square baking pan.

Mix together flour, sugar, lemonade, baking powder, cinnamon, and salt in a small bowl. Set aside.

Using a separate bowl, add oil, egg, vanilla extract, and milk and whisk together.

Form a well in the middle of the dry ingredients and pour in the wet ingredients. Stir the wet into the dry, being careful not to over stir. Add the sour cream, and stir until combined.

Fold in the strawberries, and pour the mixture into your prepared pan. Set it aside.

Prepare Topping
Combine the topping ingredients in a small bowl. Dot over the top of the batter in the pan. Use a rubber spatula to swirl the topping.

Bake for 25 to 30 minutes, depending on how moist the strawberries are. Test with a toothpick in the center to ensure the cake is done. Set aside to cool.

Make the icing by stirring the powdered sugar, almond milk, or cream, and vanilla together. Drizzle over the coffee cake.

Makes 8 servings. Serve warm or cool.

Nutrition Info for Strawberry Coffee Cake

By the way, Cinco de Mayo is coming up next week. Looking for some delicious Mexican dishes to celebrate? Check out my Mexican Food Cookbook in the sidebar. It has some great low carb recipes in it.

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

 

Breakfast & Brunch, Recipes

Oh, So Good Sweet Potato Scones

Photo: Sweet Potato SconesTrue confessions here. Recently, I had dinner at a BBQ restaurant in town and they served a “sweet potato crunch.” These are what we call Thanksgiving sweet potatoes, a puree of potatoes with brown sugar, and pecans. Very rich tasting. I brought home almost all of it and decided to use it in scones. After checking two of three recipes, I combined a couple and made these scones.

Now, the carb count on the ones I made is higher because that crunch had real sugar in it. This version is made using sugar substitutes as well as flour substitutes that are low carb. For my flour choices, I used Carbquik, DCC All Purpose Flour, and Anthony’s Gluten Flour. You can use any low carb flour combination you like, but this selection worked out well for me. For the brown sugar and confectioners (powdered) sugar, I used Swerve, which has the best taste and measures like regular sugar.

For those who want to make this with nut flours, the measurements for those will follow this recipe.

1 cup Sweet Potato Puree
1 cup Low Carb Baking Mix (Carbquik, Bakesquick)
3/4 cup Low Carb All Purpose Flour
1/4 cup Gluten Flour
1/4 cup packed Brown Sugar Substitute
1 Egg
1 teaspoon Ground Cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground Ginger
1/4 teaspoon ground Nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon ground Cloves
1 tablespoon Baking Powder
1/2 teaspoon Salt
1/2 cup Pecans, finely chopped
5 tablespoons Butter, sliced into pieces
1/3 cup Unsweetened Vanilla Almond Milk
2 tablespoons Sugar Substitute
1/2 teaspoon Vanilla Extract

Maple Glaze:
3/4 cup powdered sugar substitute
3 tablespoons pure Sugar-free Maple Syrup
1/8 teaspoon Cinnamon

If you need to make the sweet potato puree, bake or microwave a large or three small sweet potato and scoop out the flesh. Set aside.

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F. Prepare a baking sheet with a parchment paper.

In a large mixing bowl, add the baking mix, all purpose flour, gluten flour, brown sugar, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, cloves, baking powder and finely chopped pecans and whisk together. Using a pastry cutter or your clean hands to cut the butter into the flour until mixture is like crumbles.

In a separate bowl, add the sweet potato puree, egg, milk, white sugar substitute, and vanilla extract and whisk until combined.

Add the wet ingredients to the dry and stir with a large spoon until the ingredients are completely mixed together. The mixture will be thick, so use your hands to pull it together and knead it in.

Dump the dough in the center of the baking sheet and shape it into an 8″ circle. It will be about 1″ or more thick. Using a knife or pizza cutter, slice the dough into 8 even wedges. No need to cut all the way through unless you want to separate each scone to get a crust on the sides.

Bake for 15 to 18 minutes until the scones are golden brown and cooked all the way through. If they brown too quickly cover the top with foil to prevent burning.

Prepare the glazes while the scones are baking. In a small bowl, add the powdered sugar substitute, sugar-free maple syrup, and cinnamon. Stir together until it is smooth and completely blended. Drizzle or spread the glaze over the scones.

If you wish, sprinkle a few chopped pecans on top of each scone. Makes 8 scones.

Hint: In either recipe, you can substitute 2 teaspoons of Pumpkin Pie Spice or All Spice for the cinnamon, ginger, clove, and nutmeg.
You can also substitute Unsweetened Coconut Milk for the Almond Milk, or you can use milk or cream.

Nut flour version (Gluten-free):

1 cup Sweet Potato Puree
1 cup Almond Flour
1/2 cup Coconut Flour
1/4 cup packed Brown Sugar Substitute
2 Eggs, plus 1 Egg White
1 teaspoon ground Cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground Ginger
1/4 teaspoon ground Nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon ground Cloves
1 tablespoon Baking Powder
1/2 teaspoon Salt
1/2 cup Pecans, finely chopped
5 tablespoons Butter, sliced into pieces
1/3 cup Unsweetened Vanilla Almond Milk
2 tablespoons Sugar Substitute
1/2 teaspoon Vanilla Extract

Maple Glaze:
3/4 cup powdered sugar substitute
3 tablespoons pure Sugar-free Maple Syrup
1/8 teaspoon Cinnamon

The instructions to make are the same as above. You may have to add a tablespoon or more liquid if the dough is too dry. The extra eggs and egg white should provide enough to hydrate the coconut flour. The extra egg white will help the dough rise.

Makes 8 scones.