Cocoa Muffincakes v 1.10

I've been gradually mucking about with a recipe for something that vaguely resembles "chocolate muffins", somewhat more than strawberries resemble iguanas, but somewhat less than these things resemble any form of bread- or cake- based item in the world.

These are low-carb and gluten-free.

It uses mostly healthy ingredients: nuts (almond meal), seeds (flax meal), protein powder (Designer Whey Vanilla), eggs, butter, cream cheese, and quality cocoa. Optionally you can add other nuts or berries.

The processed items (aside from protein powder) include artificial vanilla extract, baking powder, sweetzfree (liquid sucralose), DaVinci syrup and Fiberfit for combined sweeteners.

The current recipe makes 40-44 "mini-muffin" sized items. I warn you that baking anything containing flax seed meal is SO much better done in a spray-it-first silicone baking pan. You can toss in half a walnut or a blackberry or couple blueberries to each muffin before adding the batter if you like, that is yummy too.

1 serving I count as 3 of the muffin-things.
Calories: 293g Fat: 23g Carbs: 6.85g Fiber: 3.33g ECC: 3.52g Protein: 16.32g

For a sweet-thang, 3.52 ecc and 16.32 protein is not bad!

They are munchy enough to graze on, but so high in protein/fiber that once they start digesting I lose interest in eating any more of them for awhile.

My favorite part of these things is that I can put them in a ziplock and keep them with me through a long day and evening. (A paper towel in there will reduce moisture.) I don't have to refrigerate them, I can just munch on them when I want to. Since the number of fairly low carb high protein items that do NOT need to be refrigerated or cooked on the spot is very low, I consider these very cool.

These are fairly sweet and you could put cream-cheese frosting on them and use them as cupcakes. I've also had these with a few lowcarb chocolate chips dropped inside each muffin, that is good too but makes them more candy-like. This particular recipe version tastes like a semi-dry, subtly-flavored brownie sort of. I think I will add a little more oil next time.

I might add that a *quality* cocoa, oil, and protein powder are obviously important to the end-result of stuff like this. I used Penzey's 24% butterfat baking (non-dutched) cocoa, macademia nut oil, and Designer Whey Vanilla Praline protein powder.

Special thanks to the fabulous Niki at Oh.2.B.Fit whose wonderful raspberry cream muffins gave me the idea to switch out my cream for cream cheese and increase my almond meal, which made this version of these muffins the best in texture so far out of all the versions.

I'm going to see, another time, if I can drop the cocoa and aim for making these fruity in a way that I can combine both extracts and real fruit for stronger flavor. I'm thinking lemon-blueberry, or orange-raspberry maybe.

Click below for a full-size image you can save or print.



Happy munching!

PJ

Midnight Munchies and the Ode to Carbs

I know. Me of all people. Mistress of forgot-to-eat-fulness. I actually had an appetite a little bit ago. And I wanted to be bad. I wanted to be a frozen taquito ho. My body said yes, yessss, YES! And I actually got out of bed and went to the kitchen. I stood in the darkness in my bare feet in the center of the kitchen. It was 1:14am in the morning and I was humming a few bars of "Ode to Carbs".

Ode to Carbs

They slither here through quantum dimensions of cold
Through the magic of cupboards, now nearly bare
Which call in the night to their playmates of old
Come pasta, tortillas, and chocolates so rare!

I hear subtle shuffling of boxes and bags
The cellular memories are filling my room
'To all of the cookies I've loved before'
--and anything frozen I ate with a spoon

My body is yearning for thick pizza crust
For garlic bread toast and fresh cookie dough
For waffles with light powdered sugar as dust
And frozen taquitos you nuke till they glow

Oh, carbohydroxilatechemicalstuff!
Ingredient glories I cannot pronounce
You're still somewhere deep in my heart.

You fuzz up my brain so I fail to remember
All the good reasons why just last September
I emptied my household of starch.

But how I recall when we were still lovers
Oh pasta, your flatulence moved me so!
Your gluten ensured not a pound would desert me
For 10 minutes high and a 2 hour low.

O carbs how I long for the thrill at my peril!
I lust for eclairs though my oversized heart
Beats quickly while insulin slithers into me
And says 'I'm ready! Last dance in the dark?'

It's night. So quiet.
Clock clickedy-ticking.
I'd abandon my diet
For canned frosting-licking.

I want me some CARBS!
In the MILLIONS! Sounds GREAT!
So I foraged, house-wide --

...but I only found steak.



Friggin low carb.
Thanks to this stupid eating plan,
I might actually live another day to whine about it.

-- PJ

I seldom suffer carb cravings. Or any appetite at all for that matter. Must be hormonal!

Sweetbread Bowl (aka 'Mock Danish')
version 162 out of at least 1.7 million. Ideal midnight munchie.
(original 400+ message recipe/variant thread is here.)

1 large egg
1-2 oz cream cheese
1/4 teaspoon fiberfit powder (or 2 tsp sweetener equivalent)
some kind of extract or flavor (tonight I used vanilla & blueberry)
some kind of LC jam or berries (tonight I used frozen wild blueberries)

Use a cheap round plastic microwaveable bowl.
Nuke cream cheese till soft (if it isn't already).
Mix up well with egg, with fork.
Add all the other junk but leave some jam/berries out, mix with fork.
(There'll be little chunks of cream cheese. That's fine.)
Nuke it for about 1.5 minutes.
Add jam/remaining berries to middle, nuke another 30 seconds.
Let cool slightly.
Eat.
Live another day.

.

Spicy Pesto Tuna Salad

I don't have nutrition counts for this, because I am insanely lazy today, and because I didn't weigh the veggies which I'd need to for any decent estimate. Suffice to say this is a fairly lowcarb substantial protein meal that was VERY munchable for lunch and dinner.

Spice wimps, you could replace the peppers with other crunchy veggies small-diced like celery, broccoli or cooked asparagus. I think adding a few crunchy seeds or chopped nuts and diced roma tomato might be good too.

Spicy Pesto Tuna Salad

6 oz well-drained canned tuna
~2 Tbsp mayonnaise (just to get it wet/mixed, not as a main flavor)
~3-4 Tbsp basil pesto (this is the dominant flavor)
~1-3oz tiny-cubed jack cheese
2 medium garlic cloves, minced
1 anaheim chili, finely chopped
2 medium jalapeno peppers, finely chopped
4 medium green onions (scallions), finely chopped
~1 tsp crushed red pepper flakes

I mixed everything but the pesto and cheese together, then added the pesto and mixed, then added the cheese and mixed. I only added the cheese to increase protein and calories for me, it was not necessary to the recipe. Makes 2-3 servings.

Obviously your counts will depend on what you put in it and how much, and how many servings you make out of it. It's just "a bowl of stuff" and it is yummy cold, which during summer is GREAT. The peppers and onions make it 'crunchy' added to the shredded/creamy which is a neat combo.

This is vaguely similar to my mexi-chicken mix (green or red) except pesto is the dominant flavor instead of enchilada sauce and it's tuna not chicken. They are probably pretty interchangeable though for the most part (that one has nutrition counts). Part of my continuing search for stuff I can eat that is easy, fast, yummy, high protein, lowcarb, and can be made with either pre-cooked (slowcooker) chicken breasts or canned tuna.

This tasted great! I suppose since it's dumping tons of stuff in there anyway, you could also throw in a tiny bit of chopped boiled egg for yet-more protein. It made me two servings, but it could easily have been 3, or even 4 if it was being used as a spread for LC bread/tortilla rollup.

Caveat: I love pesto. If you are not a pesto fan you are not going to like this one. Theoretically I could probably eat a volkswagon as long as it had pesto on it, so you might take my gushing with a grain of salt.

PJ

A Few Little Things

Here's a few little things I've made recently that some folks might like. This doesn't have nutrition on it and most are loose concept recipes you can mess with however you like.


Eggs & Mushrooms

I made this in the morning and the kid and I agree it's ridiculously good. It's one of those no-brainer recipes I feel stupid for even writing down, but I never tried it before so maybe someone else hasn't either.

Ingredients:
* couple TBSP saved bacon grease (I make bacon just to save the grease for eggs)
* couple TBSP butter (use all butter if you don't have bacon grease.)
* some diced onion or scallion
* a few minced cloves of garlic
* a couple ounces mushrooms, cleaned/de-stem'd and sliced thin
* a few eggs
* optionally, a little cream or half&half or milk (or just water is fine)
* some finely shredded cheese, any kind you like (we used colby-jack mix)
* beef broth or french onion soup

I put the bacon grease and garlic in a frying pan and let it get hot and start to cook. I added the butter and melted it, then poured in the onion and cooked for a couple minutes, then poured in the sliced mushrooms and a few ounces of either beef broth/stock or french onion soup (I used the soup as it was all I had), and sauteed it all together for awhile until it seemed cooked through. Turned off heat.

In a cup or bowl crack a few eggs into it and add some salt&pepper or whatever seasoning you like, add a little liquid (the cream/water whatever) and use a stick blender to make it frothy. (Optional of course.) In a separate tiny frying pan, spray it and make it hot then pour the egg batter in there. I let it cook, lifting up the sides to tilt the liquid under so it cooks like an 'egg pie'. You could do this as a quiche if you preferred.

Turn the heat back on the mushroom mix so it gets hot again.

Cut the egg pie into however many pieces you need for the folks eating, and put each on a plate. Sprinkle some shredded cheese on the egg-pie-slice and then on the plate just around it. Then dump some amount of your mushroom mix on top of the egg-pie-slice and the plate around it. The heat will melt the cheese into it.

Obviously your quantity of all ingredients needs to be "eyeballed". The mushroom mix should end up very wet at least. You could add thickNthin to make it a little thicker if you need to (that is a lowcarb replacement for cornstarch or other thickeners, see netrition.com for it I think), or just add more 'stuff' to it (you could add chopped peppers for example).

It was yummy! As variation, I think I could have added a little bit of cream cheese or sour cream to the mushroom mix; and I could have added some finely shredded parmesan to the top if I were presenting it to guests.


Cocoa Coconut Bits

Some folks want to get coconut oil into their diet on purpose, and in my case I'm always desperate to add calories that don't have too many carbs, as my weight means my caloric intake needs to be decent to avoid the starvation response that is the primary cause of my fat to begin with, but usually getting that many calories, unless I'm living on bacon and mayo or something, is hard work.

This is a slightly modified recipe a friend gave me. I made this in a silicon baking pan and I'm not sure how well it would come out in anything else; if you don't have silicon, I recommend using the wax paper in a pie or cake pan method instead.

Ingredients:
* 1/3 cup coconut oil (or 2/3 cup if you don't have the cream below)
* 1/3 cup coconut cream concentrate (tropicaltraditions.com has the pure coconut stuff of all kinds)
* 2 TBSP cocoa (I recommend Penzeys.com 24% butterfat dutched)
* 1 tsp vanilla extract (artificial is much lower carb)
* 1/2 tsp cinnamon (or any spice you prefer)
* optionally, other spices or extracts (citrus peel/extract might be nice too)
* sweetener of some kind. I used a lot of sweetzfree. For me usually chocolate is 1 part cocoa to 4 parts sweetener to work; I think I used about 20 drops.

In a small saucepan, melt the coconut oil. Low heat, it doesn't take much. Add in the coconut cream and melt that with it. Add the vanilla and spice(s) and stir well, then stir in the cocoa.

Nonstick spray a silicon pan (I used a mini-donut pan, but a mini-muffin or even plain muffin pan would work), or, put wax paper inside a pie or cake pan. Pour the mix (it is really a thin liquid) into it and stick it in the fridge to chill. Because coconut oil is solid at 75 degrees or so, it'll usually only take about 15-20 minutes to make these chilled (depends on thickness). When fully chilled through, if you used a pie/cake pan, take it out and break it into pieces. If you used a silicon pan, turn each little piece out. I stored all the little mini-donut shapes (quite cute really!) in a ziploc.

My kid thinks this is revolting by the way. She said, "It tastes like it is almost pure coconut oil, bleagh!" Yes... because it is. But, it's a cocoa flavored coconut oil which makes it pretty decent tasting to me, much like a candy of sorts. Once in awhile if I feel like eating something but it's not food time, I'll just have one of these. They are rich enough that you don't want to eat lots, but they have lots of good fat so they are satiating. Deals with my occasional chocolate longing as well. And I bet I could just stir a little ring into my coffee and have a cocoa mocha!


Pesto Chicken Salad

Spice wimps can replace the jalapenos with diced green bell pepper. :-)

Ingredients:
* 4-6oz diced or chopped cooked chicken (this is great for leftover chicken!)
* 1/4 cup pesto
* 2 oz cream cheese, very softened or melted slightly
* some diced scallions (green onions have fewer carbs than bulb onions) I used 4
* some diced jalapeno (the more the hotter, obviously!) I used 2 medium ones
* optionally, some finely grated cheese, any kind you like but pepper jack would be good

Mix the pesto into the supersoft cream cheese. Mix in the chicken, scallions and pepper. Nuke for about a minute which melts the cheese(s) further, then mix well.

You can put this on any kind of breadish, wrap it in a protein crepe, or eat it plain with a fork -- it's good cold from the fridge as well as hot. I could almost live on this stuff and what I like best is that I can make a lot of it thanks to crockpotting some chicken, keep it in the fridge in separate little half-cup Glad plastic containers, and when it's time to eat I can just eat it or nuke it so it's hot and eat it... insta-food, real food, high protein low carb.

PJ

Egg+ Crepes (sweet version)

I seem pretty lively for someone who died of joy a couple hours ago. I did an experiment based on a recipe and it came out so well I think my eyes are still crossed. Me. The cook so scary I'm lucky to make eggsalad without screwing it up. Amazing.

This rocks. The original recipe I didn't use but based it on is here and the detailed post where I have all my waxing-on about it and how I made it is here. Ingredients and basics are below. I really recommend this one.

Egg+ Crepes (sweet version)

3 eggs (I used large)
2 Tablespoons butter (melted, I used unsalted)
1 oz cream cheese (greatly softened)
1 teaspoon almond flour (I used the course meal)
1 teaspoon flax meal (golden)
1 teaspoon protein powder (I used designer whey vanilla-praline)
1 teaspoon carbsense baking mix (like carbquick)
1 Tablespoon DaVinci Maple(pancake) syrup (it's a sweetener too)
(I meant to add some kind of spice but forgot!)
I added a drop or 2 of brown sugar extract

Filling: whatever you want. I used ricotta, lowcarb jam and a pkt Splenda.

It made 5 crepes in my 8" pan.

Nutrition, Summary:

Totals for the five crepes: Cal 585.04 Fat 53.26 Carb 4.64 Fiber 1.17 Protein 23.8 (ECC 3.47)

Total per crepe (1/5): Cal 117.01 Fat 10.65 Carb .93 Fiber .23 Protein 4.76 (ECC .70)

You'll need to add the counts for whatever filling you use, to the above.


Instructions:

Mix all your stuff together until batter is thin and smooth though some tiniest chunks of cream cheese may remain, that was ok in mine.

If you don't know how to make crepes or don't have a crepe pan, I used an 8" nonstick shallow saute pan, sprayed it with nonstick stuff before each crepe (lightly, not heavily), poured about 1/5 the batter (maybe half a cup?) into it for each one, turned the pan until it well coated the whole bottom and a few times around the bottom-sides to make that solid too, and let cook about a minute on low-med or until the top was 'set'. Then I flipped it (sliding it gently out onto an oversized spatula, then flipping) and cooked the other side about a minute, then flipped the pan above a plate to drop it out.

I spread some of my filling all over the crepe, then rolled up, and put a tiny bit of lowcarb jam on the top. Would have been better if I had slightly nuked the jam in a little dish; that way it goes farther and it's really good warm, could be 'drizzled' over it.

Comments:

This gets my 5 star rating for taste. I'd never made crepes before but now that I know how and by the last one was getting the hang of it, I don't think this will be hard to make from now on. It took me an hour to make all of them and clean up my mess this morning but I bet I could do it in about 15 minutes next time.

Some butter with a cinnamon/sweetener mix, rolled up, would be great on these too.

Actually I'm thinking that I could do a carbsense/almond/flax/protein dry "mix" of the four and keep it in the fridge, and then just grab that by the teaspoon/tablespoon into this in the morning, that might save time/trouble.

As well as rolling up with filling, like crepes:

You could layer these out flat with butter in between and syrup on top and eat them like super thin pancakes. They were actually surprisingly filling; I ate three and I had to force the last one down (I didn't have a container to store it in to save, is why, need to go get some).

If you were making a savory version of this, you could saute some stuff for the inside (I'm thinking like a little shredded cooked chicken, mushrooms, onions, peppers, garlic, and some grated cheese melty on top), then dump that in the crepe once it's flipped and fold it over like some hybrid of omelette and quesadilla.

Although these are not "tough" like tortillas (which need gluten for that), they are more than competent to serve as a soft burrito or taco shell if you made a savory (not sweet) version, especially if you made them larger so they'd be easier to roll up while folding up one side (so you could hold it by hand).

This could be messed with for variants very easily. I think next time I might put a tad more carbsense (baking mix) in. I bet one egg could be replaced with a bit more cream cheese or something for those who really just are NOT into eggs at all, although I have to say I don't like eggs and sweet but this didn't taste eggy enough for that to be any serious issue (to me anyway).

My next experiment: Did I mention that I am a pesto and hot-pepper freak? I'm going to mix pesto, finely chopped cooked chicken, finely chopped sliced peppers, and make a savory version of these crepes, maybe even with Rye flavor and Caraway seed, and then use that as a rather thick 'spread' for them, sprinkle a little fresh grated parmesan and red pepper flakes on top and roll up. They'd be thicker but it would work.

Actually, putting toothpicks in and slicing the roll ito swirly medallions would probably be cool and make a great looking appetizer or snacker now that I think of it.
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Munchy Parmey Chicken Chunks

All recipes back date a month so they don't interfere with current blogging fyi.

OK, the first-source (prior to modifications, etc.) of this recipe seems to be in Dr. Atkins big recipe book (buy it here) under the title Angel Wings. However, it mosey'd on over to the awesome LowCarber forum on a thread called Heroin Chicken Wings (read thread here). I modified this slightly and I didn't use wings at all, so to further devolve the name of this poor recipe, I call my version Munchy Parmey Chicken Chunks since... well, that's exactly what they are.

Munchy Parmey Chicken Chunks

INGREDIENTS

A bunch of chicken. Use whatever you want. We used about 2-3 pounds of boneless skinless breast of chicken, cut with kitchen scissors up into pieces that held about 2-3 bites.

1 cup grated Parmesan cheese. Personally this recipe's so parmey that it makes you wanna yell OUI! so I think mixing a little Romano in would be nice, we'll do that next time.

2 Tablespoons dried parsley
1 Tablespoon dried oregano
2 teaspoons paprika
Did you know that the higher quality the paprika, the bolder the color? You pay bigtime for the screaming orange level but wow. It's cool.

P.S. I thought there was too much parsley-etc. in this, I'll reduce it next time.

The original recipe had salt but they're insane. Parmesan is so salty already! I wouldn't add any salt unless you're selling drinks to the people you're serving them to.

1/2 tsp. black pepper

1/2 cup butter, melted

Optional: garlic; bit of cayenne; red pepper flakes.


INSTRUCTIONS

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

2. Cut the chicken into pieces

3. Combine the cheese(s) and spices in a bowl.

4. Line a shallow baking pan with foil. You'll be sorry if you don't.

5. Melt the butter in whatever fashion you prefer.

6. Dip each chicken piece real well in the butter, roll it around in the cheese and seasoning mixture, and arranged it in the foil-lined pan.

7. Bake for about 1 hour.


NUTRITION

Makes however much you make with it! Each piece has only a trace of carbs, since chicken doesn't have any and there's not so much stuff on any given piece.


COMMENTS

This would be ideal with marinara sauce but it's carby. We had it with blue cheese dressing for dipping.

My 10 year gave this her "I ate all mine, do you have any more?" approval.

This is a very 'munchy'-like meal. It's not like a warm dinner or something for guests at a table. This is an awesome thing to make when you're going to be sitting around watching a screen and everybody else is munching on junk you can't have if you're lowcarb. Or if you're going to have to eat in the car or something. There aren't many LC foods that are sorta-crunchy, this is novel in that regard.