A source of low-carb, ketogenic Christmas cookie recipes.

Being on a ketogenic or low-carb diet at Christmas time sucks. You have to turn down so many invitations and not make so many traditional family foods, just to keep from breaking your diet. And unlike other diets, breaking a low-carb/ketogenic diet can mean your metabolism changes back to running on glucose instead of ketones, and getting back on your healthy diet makes you feel miserable for a couple of days. Other people may be able to jump back on the LC/keto diet right away, but I’m weak. One serious slip-up can mean a month or more of being constantly tempted by the carby foods I’m addicted to.

But Christmas cookies are not something you have to give up. One source I use is this cookbook— Cooking with Coconut Flour by Bruce Fife. It has a whole chapter of cookie recipes. The down side is that the recipes come in two versions, one with sugar, one with half the sugar plus stevia. I adapt them by eliminating ALL sugar and using stevia— either the powdered kind or the liquid. If the recipe has brown sugar in it, you can buy the ‘English Toffee’ flavor of liquid stevia— available from Amazon.com— to give your recipes that brown sugar flavor.

I noticed, last time I made cookies, that without sugar you have to flatten the dough balls for the cookies because they won’t melt down like sugared cookies do. Also, NEVER add cold ingredients to melted coconut oil in a recipe. The coconut oil hardens and becomes rock-like. I fixed that by putting the whole dough bowl into a bigger bowl of hot tap water until the coconut oil re-melted.

You can get the necessary coconut flour from Walmart— even in the small town where my nearest Walmart is, they carry it. They also have unsweetened flaked coconut, called for in some of the recipes.

If the book doesn’t have a cookie recipe similar to the carby cookie you used to love, some can be adapted. Look at the spices in your carby recipe, and use that spice mix with your coconut flour cookie recipe. You may have to settle for a round-cookie version of something you used to make with rolled-out dough and cookie cutters, but you may end up with a similarly satisfying flavor.

If you are a confirmed carbohydrate addict and haven’t been low-carbing long, these cookies won’t taste that great to you. Not because they AREN’T great, but because you expect the taste to come along with a satisfying ‘hit’ of your addiction substances, sugar, fast-acting carbs, and wheat. It’s like offering a smoker a cigarette with no nicotine. But don’t despair, the longer you low-carb, the better low-carb treats will taste. When I’ve been ‘good’, if I break the diet to eat a carby comfort food, I sometimes think that my current low-carb equivalent of that food actually tastes much better. By going off the diet, I’m just feeding the monkey.

Last year, I packed up some of the cookies I made and put them in the freezer. They were perfectly good when thawed. If you live alone, freezing some is a good idea. They keep you from binge-eating the cookies out of boredom. Which is bad, because these cookies do have SOME carbs and eating a whole batch in one day is NOT recommended. Also, you can make a habit of keeping some low-carb cookies in the freezer at all times, for when temptation strikes.

Keto/Low-Carb Recipe: Cheese Pancakes

Sometimes eating healthy can be a real pain first thing in the morning. All those traditional breakfast things— toast, French toast, Pop-Tarts, Cheerios, hot oatmeal— all now on our Not For Us foods list.

But how about some pancakes? Tasty pancakes smothered in butter, perhaps with some sugar-free syrup? We can do that. Here is my favorite pancake recipe, which makes one serving of pancakes.

Cheese Pancakes

2 T (tablespoons) full-fat cottage cheese or cream cheese (or 1 T each)

1 egg

1/2 T ground flaxseed

1/2 T melted butter or melted coconut oil

1/8 t (teaspoon) sea salt or seasoned salt

Put all your ingredients in a small mixing bowl. Yes, even the butter/coconut oil, it’s part of the batter. Use a hand blender or mixer to blend the ingredients until smooth. You can also use a hand-crank egg beater/mixer if you are off the grid, but this will be harder work if you’ve used cream cheese.

Heat up your frying pan for about 5 or 6 minutes. Then add the butter or cooking oil you will be using to fry your pancakes.

Add the batter to the pan. I have used this recipe to make a large pancake of the crepe/blintz variety, but for breakfast pancakes I used to make three pancakes. These pancakes are thin and hard to flip, so you might do 6 or so little ‘silver dollar’ pancakes.

Since I fry my pancakes in butter, I pour leftover melted butter from the pan onto the pancakes once they have been put on my dish. Easier than putting cold butter on them and hoping for it to melt.

You can use this pancake recipe for a variety of purposes. I’ve made a filled low-carb blintz with it. I’m thinking of making a hamburger/cheese filling and making a blintz version of my mom’s cheeseburger turnovers.

---

---

Notes on ingredients

Cottage cheese, cream cheese: don’t use low-fat versions of these. You need the fat to make you feel full, and to keep you in a state of ketosis. Most people on ketogenic or strict low-carb diets will find their cholesterol numbers improving on the diet, so don’t worry about the fat.

If you are worried about the dairy— well, it is possible to make a yogurt out of coconut milk (the kind you buy in cans). Don’t use a low-fat variety of coconut milk, and check the labels of different varieties, some have added ingredients you don’t want in your coconut milk. If the coconut yogurt doesn’t work so well in the recipe, perhaps you could make coconut yogurt cheese— you put yogurt in a strainer lined with a coffee filter overnight, letting the whey (or whatever that stuff is) drain off. I have done this with home-made dairy-milk yogurt, but haven’t tried it with coconut milk yogurt. Dana Carpender’s recipe book 200 Low-Carb High-Fat Recipes has a recipe for coconut yogurt on page 51. I find her recipe books VERY useful, so I’d suggest giving her a try.

Ground flaxseed: In the original recipe I adapted for these pancakes, it called for soy flour. I don’t care to put soy in my diet, except for soy sauce, so I have tried alternatives. Ground almond, pecan or walnut is nice but the batter will be thinner. Ground flaxseed plumps up the batter a bit. A little bit.

Butter/Coconut Oil: You may have read old-fashioned recommendations to avoid butter at all costs. The up-to-date science says otherwise. And coconut oil is very good for a ketogenic diet— a diet which is proven to be good for your heart.

Salt: When you stopped eating a processed food diet and started eating a healthy low-carb/ketogenic/Paleo diet, you cut out most of the sources of salt in your diet. Many of us when we start cooking healthy omit the salt. Don’t do this. Salt makes food taste better, and tasty low-carb food helps you resist the temptation to have ‘just a little’ processed food. Also, you can actually feel sick after a rapid switch from salty processed food to very-low-salt home-cooked low carb food. And your blood tests can show that your sodium is low.

 

Recipe: Keto Bone Broth Mug Soup

Keto Bone Broth Mug Soup

Ten Benefits of Bone Broth by The Coconut Mama http://thecoconutmama.com/2012/11/nutrient-dense-bone-broth/

Here’s a keto/Paleo convenience meal that you make in your mug! Great for breakfast.

1-2 T coconut oil (regular, unless you want the coconut flavor in cold-pressed oil)

dash of seaweed granules— kelp, dulse whatever you like (optional)

dash of sea salt

1 T sour cream, heavy cream or coconut milk, not ‘reduced fat’ versions (optional)

1/4 to 1/2 cup of reduced bone broth, depending on broth’s strength

Hot water

Put the coconut oil, kelp, sea salt, cream and reduced bone broth into a large/double sized coffee mug. Pour hot water into the mug to fill. Stir until the coconut oil and sour cream melt. Taste— if your bone broth was weak, you may need to add a bit of something to bring up the flavor, such as a bit more salt, more seaweed granules, a bit of vegetable broth powder, reduced grocery store broth, or even grocery store bouillon granules (I’m trying to give that up, really….)

This is as close to an ‘instant breakfast’ type of keto/Paleo food you can find. (It may seem complicated the first time, but before long you can do it in your sleep.)

Note on the bone broth: ‘reduced’ bone broth means that you’ve boiled it down a bit to reduce the water content and intensify the flavor. This is a good idea for storing the bone broth in the freezer. When the bone broth is stored in the refrigerator there may be a solid layer of healthy fats on the top. You will need to place the bone broth container (I use canning jars) in a pan of hot tap water to bring it to room temperature to melt the fat so you can shake up your bone broth to mix up the components.

To make bone broth: google for ‘bone broth’ recipes. You can use bones from leftovers— beef, chicken, pork, lamb, goat, venison— whatever you’ve got. (Put a gallon-size freezer bag into your freezer and put in leftover bones to save up enough bones.) The version of bone broth recipe I use calls for cooking it 48 hours in a 3 quart crock pot.

Substitutions: when your bone broth is all gone, you can substitute reduced grocery-store broth, reduced home-made vegetable broth, home-made dashi, or store-bought dashi or bouillon powder (which you probably can’t get without MSG).

Keto diet questions? Read Keto Clarity: http://www.amazon.com/Keto-Clarity-Definitive-Benefits-Low-Carb-ebook/dp/B00MEX9B4C   It, and other books like it, literally saved my life— I have diabetes with complications that made my doctor cut off my diabetes meds. My blood sugar, blood pressure and kidney test results have all improved as a result of the ketogenic diet.

Benefits of bone broth by The Coconut Mama: http://thecoconutmama.com/2012/11/nutrient-dense-bone-broth/

Recipe: Keto Rescue Bouillon

I can’t get cool-looking Maggi beef bouillon where I live.

 

I have been tweaking my diet into a more ketogenic form lately. Ketogenic diets are good for a variety of health problems, from epilepsy to obesity to diabetes to autism. It may also be beneficial for kidney disease, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. Here is a book that tells more about it:

Keto Clarity: Your Definitive Guide to the Benefits of a Low-Carb, High-Fat Diet – Eric Westman MD & Jimmy Moore

The book recommends using bouillon as a drink to help add back electrolytes/salt when you drop the typical American diet. Author Jimmy Moore also recommends adding butter to whatever you eat. This recipe is the result.

Keto Rescue Bouillon

Bouillon— cube or powder, enough for 1 cup, NOT the low-sodium kind. I have not been able to locate bouillon without sugar, but at least I found a brand without MSG!

1/2 Tablespoon butter

pinch kelp/seaweed powder (optional)

Hot water

~~~~~

Add the bouillon, butter & optional seaweed to your cup. Add hot water. Stir.

I was sick with flu-like symptoms from my flu shot when I first made this. I felt a lot better. NOTE: do not use this recipe if you are still on the Standard American Diet eating lots of pre-salted foods! This is for ketogenic and low-carb diets where you are essentially making all your own food at home (other than ordered eggs over-easy and bacon or ham at restaurants), and you are at risk for not having enough sodium in your diet.