Minecraft Birthday Cake

Turned Birch Benders Keto cake mixes & icing, and some food coloring into a LC Minecraft birthday cake. My grass block decorating leaves a lot to be desired, but the kids loved it, and it was tasty!

Note about the icing. Out if the container I thought it was pretty gross (being honest here). But then I added a block of softened cream cheese and whipped it until light and fluffy. It was pretty👌🏻that way.

Hard to believe Samuel is 11!!! 💜 Next month he'll have been T1 diabetic for 10 years. Low carb for 9 years.

S'mores

92° outside, but we're having s'mores! Inside though. 🤣We build them on a plate and blow torch them! 🔥🔥🔥

I put half the cinnamon the recipe calls for and roll them as thin and as evenly as I can. Samuel and I 💜 these!

Banana Split Popsicles

Made an easy, very low carb snack this morning for the kids. It's going to be hot today, so a popsicle will be really nice for their afternoon snack. 

 

I also love homemade treats that take time to set because it teaches the kids patience and they learn everything in life isn't about instant gratification.

 

1c heavy whipping cream (HWC)

1c Unsweetened almond milk

2oz sugar-free flavored syrup

1 tsp complimentary extract

 

Blend, fill molds, freeze 2+ hours

 

 

Easy Low Carb Cupcakes or Cake

It doesn't get much easier than this recipe... dump everything in, stir, and bake. Decorate as simply or elaborately as you want.

Oven Baking Tip

🍞🌡️🍪‼️ Baking Tip  🍞🌡️🍪‼️

Did you know???  If you have the type of oven that beeps letting you know it's done pre-heating (let's say you set it to 350°), chances are VERY good it's not actually up to 350° yet when it beeps. In fact, I've NEVER had an oven that has been. My current oven is only at about 300° when it beeps...it needs another 20 minutes to get up to 350°. 

This is why using an oven thermometer is so important. A lot of people think they're not "bakers" because their baked goods come out gooey or they fall/collapse. But chances are good you're actually just under-baking them due to your oven temp.  You don't notice this when cooking because you simply let it go longer until it's done or browned. But baking is science/chemistry and oven temp is crucial to making that science work.

Also, if your oven temp is "off", did you know it can be calibrated to be correct?  Just Google how to calibrate your make/model oven and you can easily adjust it!

Oven thermometers are inexpensive... I have a double-oven and have one in each.

Decorated Shortbread Cookies

My daughter and I were on vacation last week and she found a cupcake shaped cookie cutter she wanted so I told her we'd make cookies for dessert on Sunday. I used this shortbread cookie recipe, but swapped coconut oil for the butter to make it dairy-free. That makes it a bit harder to work with, but still doable.  I also had to bake it a few extra minutes until firm.

I added strawberry extract and a little red food coloring for a pink'ish cupcake. The icing is Swerve confectioners with almond extract and a little almond milk - mix until smooth. Just put the icing in a Ziploc baggie and snip the corner to pipe onto the cookie..  I used KNOW chocolate chips for decorations and added a little whipped cream on the side (almond milk whipped cream for Samuel).

About 3-4 net carbs.

Grilled Lunch & Dessert

It's raining today, but we found a brief window to do some fast grilling.  My husband took care of grilling burgers and chicken, while I prepped the sides.  We let the kids mix and match protein and veggies.

Evie picked burgers and parmesan roasted green beans.

Samuel picked grilled chicken, cinnamon cauliflower rice, and a small amount of peas.

For dessert they had Chewy Walnut Flour Chocolate Chip cookies.  I had to make some modifications...

1) sub butter to make dairy-free
2) Lakanto spikes Samuel so I used Swerve brown sugar. (I think this gave it an "off" taste. Next time I'll just use more granular Swerve or birch xylitol.)
3) I omitted the monk fruit extract completely. It was plenty sweet without for us.

https://www.carolinesketokitchen.com/2018/12/chewy-walnut-flour-chocolate-chip

90 Second Cake: Orange Cream and Chocolate

This morning I was busy gardening (read: weeding) outside.  When I came in to decide what I was going to do for lunch, it dawned on me it was Sunday (Dessert Day) and I had nothing made.  

GASP!

I thought about what quick desserts I have in my repertoire, but could also make something new with.  Two ideas came to mind.  Then an orange and chocolate concoction came together in my mind. I love orange and chocolate together, so I decided to give a it a go.

First I made an orange flavored 90 second cake.  This is a recipe I've posted before.  I just changed out the vanilla extract for orange.  Easy easy.  I let it cool and sliced it in half for 2 servings.  Click this link to the 90 second cake recipe.

Then I made Puppy Chow (aka Muddy Buddies).  The refular version of this uses Chex cereal.  This low carb version uses fluffy pork finds.  Click this link to the Puppy Chow recipe.  

Both of these recipes can be made in about 10 minutes.  I added some whipped cream, low carb chocolate sauce, and decorated with the Puppy Chow.  The Puppy Chow is really rich, so the not-so-sweet orange cake went really well with it.

It made a pretty star shape from the top.

Strawberry Snow

Oh my gosh, this is so fun!  Apparently, my husband grew up eating this, but had since forgotten about it.  I had never heard of it.  A few months ago, my husband was visiting his parents who gave him a bunch of old books.  One of those books was Children's Digest from 1972.  In it we found this recipe. It's super simple and very light and refreshing.  

The recipe calls for strawberry jello, but use whatever sugar-free jello flavor you like.  Reminder... a lot of sugar-free jello has maltodextrin which is a sneaky name for sugar, so be sure to avoid those!

This dessert/snack is essentially flavored egg whites.  The texture stays like whipped egg whites, but is slightly sweet and has the flavor of the jello.   This dessert is 0 carbs and about 7g of protein from the egg whites, but it makes about 6 servings, so I don't even have to count this towards Samuel's bolus.  He has about a 1 cup dish as a serving.

Easy Frosted Cookie

I wanted a quick sweet treat today and had some "sugar" cookies leftover from the weekend in the fridge.  And I almost always have some sugar-free "magic shell" on my counter too, so I put the two together.  I iced my cookie with the magic shell and then put it in the freezer for about 30 seconds.  It was really good; sort of a fudge-like consistency.  This would also be an easy way to ice lots of cookies for a party and not worry about icing melting.

(Use the blog search bar to find the "sugar" cookie or magic shell recipes.)

Ice Cream Popsicles

This is a recipe I adapted from one I found online.  You will need popsicle molds that you can find at any discount store or even at most grocery stores.

Mix in a blender:

1 cup coconut cream (or heavy cream if you're not dairy-free)

1 cup unsweetened vanilla almond milk

1/4 cup Swerve confections (if you use a granular sweetener blend REALLY well)

1 1/2 tsp extract (vanilla, almond, strawberry, banana, mint, coffee, etc)

Blend very well.  Pour into 4 popsicle molds (leave room for added goodies and your handle).  Then add any fun additions (optional; 2-3 tsp per popsicle)... KNOW or Lily's chocolate chips, toasted chopped nuts, chopped strawberries, etc.  I stir the goodies in with a skewer to distribute. Freeze until solid.

These are mint chocolate chip and so good. Drizzle or dip in "Magic Shell" to make even more special!  Search "Magic Shell" on the blog for the recipe.

Low Carb "Sugar" Cookies

The first time I made these I thought they were ok.  I made a couple of small tweaks and everyone loved them the 2nd time.

Recipe link:
https://swervesweet.com/recipes/classic-italian-christmas-cookies

Tweaks:
✔️ I don't love anise cookies so I made vanilla the first time, but they were bland.  2nd time around I used almond extract in the cookie and the icing.  (Almond cookies are the best simple cookie in my opinion.)

✔️ First time I used Swerve in the dough and icing, but the dough texture seemed "off".  2nd time I used xylitol in the dough and confectioners Swerve for the icing.  Use whatever sweetener works for your blood sugar.

✔️  First time I made 24 cookies per the recipe, but they got a bit hard/too firm.  2nd time I made 12 bigger cookies.  This let the bottoms get crispy, tops firm, but still cakey in the middle.  I baked for 18-20 minutes. The texture was phenomenal!

Sprinkles are optional.  You can read my thoughts on sprinkles here:

https://happyhealthythriving.blogspot.com/2019/04/to-sprinkle-or-not.html?m=1

To Sprinkle or Not???

Anyone that has followed me for a while knows we avoid sugar at all cost.  Especially hidden sugar.  But what if sugar can be planned and consistent?  A lot of lunchmeat has small amounts of sugar (say 1g per serving) and many T1's I know do fine with lunchmeat.  Is any amount of sugar "bad"?  I don't really think so... here's why.

Last Christmas my kids asked if we could put sprinkles on our cookies.  We went to the store and looked at the ingredients... pure sugar...so my answer was "No".  I didn't really look at amounts, I answered based on the ingredients.  I searched online to see if I could make sugar-free sprinkles and sure enough you can, but it's pretty labor intensive and expensive.  I thought again about the sprinkles I could buy.  Then I thought about lunchmeat, meat sticks and a few other things Samuel can eat perfectly fine with small amounts of sugar.

1 serving of sprinkles (1 tsp) is 3 carbs.  I was standing in the store a second time trying to visualize 1 tsp of sprinkles... it seemed like a lot to me.  So I bought a jar and went home and started measuring.  Here's what various amounts of sprinkles look like weighed out...

So, 1/4 tsp of sprinkles is only 0.75 carbs.  Yes, it's pure sugar, but I thought I'd test it.  Keep in mind, my objective was to add sprinkles for fun, not to add sweetness.  It turned out 1/4 tsp is WAY too many sprinkles for 1 cookie.  The "right" number for us is about 15 sprinkles per cookie, which means a 1/4 tsp is divided between 4 cookies, so we're adding not quite 0.2 carbs per cookie.

I still carefully tested with Samuel and lo and behold, I don't have to bolus for the sprinkles at all.  I bolus for how many low carb cookies he'll be eating, but that's it.

Could I make sugar-free sprinkles?  Yes.

But in a world of 40-60 hour work weeks, homeschool, baseball practice, dance class, housework, and being a wife (etc...) a shortcut that causes no extra insulin is a win in my book.

Each person has to do what is right for them. At the end of the day, its normal blood sugar with as tight of a standard deviation as we can get that decides whether a food "works" for us.  If it doesn't work, we don't force it.  It just so happens this works for us.

Valentine Chocolates

We made our own low carb Valentine chocolates using a mold and a cute heart tin from Hobby Lobby.

Add 6oz oz of Lily's or KNOW chocolate chips with 1 tsp of refined coconut oil.  Melt in a microwavable bowl at 50% power for 45 seconds.  Stir.  Melt again at 50% power for 25 seconds.  Stir again.  Repeat another time or two until smooth.  Put into silicone molds.  Place in fridge to set. 

This makes 15 chocolates in the size you see in the pic.

Peanut Butter Drizzle Topping

After some trial and error, I've finally got down how to make peanut butter drizzle and its really easy.  The amounts listed make enough to drizzle about 8-10 cookies.  It's also really good on ice cream and other desserts.  I've been know to drizzle this in my glass for a PB & Chocolate martini too.

Put 2 Tbsp (32g) peanut butter in a small glass bowl.  Add 1/2 tsp refined coconut oil (refined has no coconut taste).  Heat in the microwave for 15 seconds on 50% power.  Stir really well.  If it's too thick to drizzle stir in another 1/4 tsp coconut oil.  You want it just drizzle-able.

After you drizzle, put in the fridge for a few minutes to set up if you want it to firm up a bit. This is an easy way to dress up simple cookies.

"Apple Cider" Cupcakes

This recipe has neither apples or apple cider in it.  This recipe is actually for donuts, but I've never made them that way.  I always make them as mini or regular sized cupcakes.  I bake them in cupcake liners and make a few other alterations:  I double the cinnamon (just because!), instead of whey I use egg white protein powder (usually less spiky for a T1) and instead of rolling in the cinnamon/Swerve mixture I top with the butter cream icing from my birthday cake recipe.

https://alldayidreamaboutfood.com/low-carb-apple-cider-donut-bites/

These were for my son and daughter's Minecraft birthday party...