Pick me a blueberry…
Under the bridge and over the dam
Looking for berries, berries for jam!
~Bruce Degen, Jamberry (1983)

Oregon’s Willamette Valley bursts with wonderful things to eat all summer long. We are so fortunate to live here. Every year, the kids and I go off on U-pick adventure, mostly for blueberries. We freeze them by the gallon for winter oatmeal toppings, muffins and pancakes. But I mostly make jam, normally at least 5 dozen 8-oz and 12-oz jars. We always have the makings for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, although our consumption fell off greatly in the last year between Nora’s diet and Anders’ newfound love for hot lunch. This year we had around 2 dozen jars left by summertime, so I only made about 15 fresh jars of blueberry jam last week.

August 6, 2010. This is what a jam-making day looked like 2 years ago, pre-keto.

I feel like there is a homesteading pioneer woman (or a squirrel) inside of me, urging me to put aside enough food for winter. My family might not make it through the cool rainy days here in Oregon without my homemade jam to provide us with vitamin C and lift our spirits. It would have felt wrong to not make jam this year, so I took Anders out picking with friends for a day to gather all of the blueberries, and a few blackberries, to make our jam. Nora stayed home that day because surrounding her with blueberry bushes and not allowing her to eat them would be cruel and I did not want to closely supervise her (although she is amazing about not eating things). Anders is a super-picker and between the two of us, we can get enough blueberries for several batches of jam in a few hours of picking.

Nora stirring the berries for her jam.

Nora has been enjoying the fresh and frozen berries with meals (4 or 5 at a sitting), but I wanted I could make her some jam too. I always use a low-methyoxyl citrus pectin (brand name Pomona’s Universal Pectin, but I buy it in bulk at our co-op). It is sugar-free, preservative-free and uses calcium as the bonding agent, so recipes do NOT require sugar to gel (unlike typical pectin products). Instead of sugar, you add a bit of calcium citrate to the recipe (comes in the box or also available in bulk). Seemed like I should be able to make Nora some sugar-free jam, but I hit a roadblock. I couldn’t find any definitive nutrition information on the pectin. I saw references to it as a form of soluble fiber, but without specific numbers I did not feel comfortable factoring it into a recipe.

I went for the other jam option that I’ve heard about but never tried: gelatin-based freezer jam. It’s keto-genius! Berries are already low-carb when eaten alone, but for gelatin jam you add in a substantial amount of water and gelatin is all protein. No added carbs, and the carbs in the berries get diluted in a larger volume of food. The final product has fewer carbs-per-weight that the berries themselves, with all of the flavor and satisfaction of eating jam just like everyone else. Win-win-win!

And another big win–it’s easy and can be made in batches that store for a long time in the freezer. The only caveat is that once opened, you have to keep it refrigerated and use it fairly quickly (I would guess 1-2 weeks) because it does not have sugar to act as a preservative. Divide it into small containers–I used 8 oz jars. This goes for all low- or no-sugar jams like my usual homemade versions, so we are accustomed to using our small jars quickly. And your keto kid will like it so much, it won’t hang around long.

Nutrition information for 1 full batch (524 g) of mixed berry gelatin jam. Divide all amounts by 524 to get the per-gram breakdown and see blog post for calculations. Nutrition information from www.caloriecount.com

Mixed Berry Gelatin Jam

70 g Blueberries
70 g Strawberries
70 g Raspberries
70 g Blackberries
1 envelope Knox Unflavored Gelatine
1 cup cold water

In a large saucepan, crush berries. They will break down more as you increase the temperature. Add water and gelatin, mixing well. You can add any no-carb sweetener to taste.

Over medium heat, slowing increasing temperature, bring mixture to boiling while stirring constantly. Reduce heat to low and simmer for 2 minutes.

Finished jar, after an overnight in the fridge.

Pour into jars, allow to cool and then cover. If you leave it out at room temperature it will take a long time to gel, so don’t be discouraged if it’s very liquid for some time. Put in the refrigerator overnight and it will be the right consistency in the morning.

Can be stored in refrigerator for 1-2 weeks, or frozen.  It is not shelf-stable unless you process in a hot water bath (which I normally do for pectin jam), so keep this in the freezer for long-term storage. I would suggest stirring before using a new jar, as the fibrous skins and bits fall to the bottom.

Perfect jam consistency!

Per gram nutritional breakdown:
Total carbs: 0.058 g
Fiber:  0.021 g
Net carbs: 0.036 g
Protein: 0.02 g
Fat:  0.002 g

Per 10 gram serving:
Total carbs: 0.58 g
Fiber: 0.021 g
Net carbs: 0.37 g
Protein: 0.2 g
Fat: 0.02 g

Just compare that to berries alone: Raspberries are great at 0.056 net carbs per gram, and the jam beats them by 0.02 g net carbs. Blueberries have the most carbs, at 0.12 g net carbs per gram of blueberries, four times more carbs than the jam. I know, seems like small gains here, but cutting a bit more carbs means a bit more yummy food to eat. The ease and convenience of having the jam in the freezer or fridge meets all of my criteria for top Nora foods.

Now, to make a truly keto food: mixed berry cream cheese. I overshot the ratio here at 4.25:1, so it can be put atop a lower-ratio baked good and balance out for a perfect ratio treat. You could decrease the ratio by adding more jam or omitting the coconut oil. I’m always trying to sneak in coconut oil because Nora gets 15 g spread out throughout the day and I get tired of mixing it into other things at mealtime. This will be a regular breakfast food, containing 1 gram of coconut oil per 10 g serving.

Nutrition facts for 1 batch of mixed berry cream cheese. See blog post for per serving break down. Nutrition facts from www.caloriecount.com

Mixed Berry Cream Cheese

140 g Primrose cream cheese (adjust your nutrition facts for the brand that you use)
20 g coconut oil
50 g Mixed berry jam (above)

Mix with a hand mixer and serve!

Note that I also show the nutrition label for 1 full batch here so that you can see the fiber content. I calculate the per-gram and per-serving values with net carbs, but if I break it down into smaller servings in the recipe analyzer that I use, the fiber line gets dropped because it is so small.

Mixed berry cream cheese

Per gram nutrition information:
Total carbs:  0.025 g
Fiber:  0.005 g
Net carbs: 0.02 g
Protein:  0.052 g
Fat:  0.31 g

Per 10 g serving:
Total carbs: 0.25 g
Fiber: 0.05 g
Net carbs: 0.2 g
Protein: 0.52 g
Fat: 3.1 g

Good stuff. I love batch cooking. Nora loves jam and cream cheese.

As I have said before, efficiency is life. But that isn’t really the most important part of this food story. The most important part was finely expressed by Voltaire: “Nothing would be more tiresome than eating and drinking if God had not made them a pleasure as well as a necessity.”

And talk about the necessity of eating. Food is good medicine, quite literally for our keto-kids.

[Everybody now!] We all scream for ice cream!

Guess what! Ice cream is primarily made out of a main ingredient in the keto diet–heavy cream! Yay! And now the sad news: to be scoopable, the way ice cream should be, it needs sugar. That’s right, the big no-no. So how to make keto ice cream? This is where I have most read and enjoyed learning about food science. This blog entry should be called, “my mediocre attempts at making keto ice cream that Nora loves anyway.”

Harold McGee’s epic tome, On Food and Cooking, gives my favorite description of the pleasures of cream:

We value cream above all for its feel. Creaminess is a remarkable consistency, perfectly balanced between solidity and fluidity, between persistence and evanescense. It’s substantial, yet smooth and seamless. It lingers in the mouth, yet offers no resistance to teeth or tongue, nor becomes merely greasy. This luxurious sensation results from the crowding of the fat globules, which are far too small for our senses to distinguish, into a small volume of water, whose free movement is thus impeded and slowed. (p. 27-28)

Ice cream is a dish that manages to heighten the already remarkable qualities of cream. By freezing it, we make it possible to taste the birth of creaminess, the tantalizing transition from solidity to fluidity. (p. 39)

Doesn’t that make you want a perfect pint of ice cream? “To taste the birth of creaminess”…it doesn’t get any better than that. And now the science part:

Plain frozen cream is hard as a rock. Sugar makes it softer, but also lowers its freezing point (the dissolved sugar molecules get in the way as the water molecules settle into ordered crystals). (p. 39)

Sadly, I do not own this book (hint hint). I had it on hold at the Corvallis Library for 2 months before I got it, then could not renew it after my time because someone else had it on hold. This is a book originally published in 1984 and updated in 2004. Come on people of Corvallis, you’ve had 8 years to check it out. That says something about this town.

Armed with this knowledge, I moved on to making ice cream with a little help from our friends. Our friend Cora made some keto raspberry ice cream for Nora a few months back and we found out about the “hard as a rock” property. It was tasty, like raspberries and cream, but was solid. I put a butter knife through the side of a plastic container trying to chisel some out. It had a ratio of about 15:1 because she used cream and not many raspberries, so I hoped that the next attempt with many more berries to provide some natural sugar would be a bit softer, Harold’s predictions notwithstanding.

Last month we received an ice cream machine as a gift from our dear neighbors, Connie and Kevin. That gave me my chance to try ice cream for Nora and put some of my food science learning to work.

Raspberry Frozen Greek Yogurt Popsicle

The first recipe was a raspberry frozen Greek yogurt. I decided that Harold knew best, so trying something less conventional might yield better results. Greek yogurt has lots of protein and a decent amount of fat, but few carbs. Protein is also a key ingredient to finessing the texture of ice cream and I was hoping that enough protein would be a recipe for success.

The result was tangy with the flavor of Greek yogurt and had a lot more raspberries than the original recipe, so it was very tasty. But it still froze fairly solid.  If we let it thaw just enough we could give it a quick stir and get an ice cream-like consistency, but thaw too much and it was liquid. Alternatively, I froze it as popsicles. The only problem is weighing the amount of yogurt in each pop and keeping track of each one. But Nora managed to eventually eat the whole batch enthusiastically, about 20 g at a time.

Nutrition facts for 22 g of Raspberry Frozen Greek Yogurt. Nutrition analysis by www.caloriecount.com

Raspberry Frozen Greek Yogurt
200 grams raspberries (about 1.5 cups)
Pinch salt
340 g (1.5 cups) Traditional Plain Greek Yogurt
114 g (0.5 cups) English Double Devon Cream
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp pure vanilla extract

The nutrition facts are for 22 g, which is about 1 popsicle. You can see that 1.3 carbs is quite a bit at once and it has a 2:1 ratio, so this would have to be paired with other things in a snack to balance it out. It’s not ideal, but yielded fairly good results.

My next attempt was based on a recipe by David Lebovitz, chef and author of The Perfect Scoop. Ice cream expert! I wanted a mint ice cream recipe made with real mint, thinking that I could get great flavor without carbs. This one is the ticket, from his blog: http://www.davidlebovitz.com/2010/05/mint-chip-ice-cream-recipe-chocolate/

I made his version and a Nora-version. Oh my, was it wonderful. It calls for 80 g of mint leaves, which is a lot (believe me, I have a gram scale). I only had about 20 g in my garden that I could harvest, but a little went a long way in this recipe.

It’s a 2-day process, but I was able to follow the recipe once while making 2 versions with a little planning. I used half-and-half instead of whole milk, but otherwise did everything in the recipe EXCEPT adding the sugar: steeped the mint leaves in hot half-and-half and cream, then cooking in the egg yolks according to the recipe (below and at the link). Then I reserved some of the mixture for Nora and added a bit of her Cytra, which is sweetened with saccharine. I then added sugar to the portion for the rest of us while it was still warm so that the sugar would dissolve. Adding the sugar at the end did not affect the quality of the regular version, and I didn’t have to make the recipe twice. Then the mixtures must cool overnight.

Nora's Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream

The next day, I froze each version in the ice cream machine. Here is where I saw the importance of sugar firsthand. I put Nora’s version in first. The machine has a frozen bowl to chill the mixture and a rotating arm that scrapes it off the side of the bowl and mixes it so that large ice crystals are not able to form. When I make Nora’s ice cream in the machine, a thick icy-cream layer builds up on the side of the bowl that the rotating arm can’t scrape away. The portion in the middle freezes more like regular ice cream, so I stop the machine, scoop out the middle part, and then wash off the inside of the bowl.

If I am as quick as possible, the bowl is cold enough to make the sugared version immediately after, but just barely. When ice cream made with sugar goes in the machine, it is soft as it freezes and the machine can easily scrape the sides. It takes a lot longer to freeze, as you would expect from the additional sugar which lowers the freezing point of the mixture. Having 2 portions of the same recipe with and without sugar really demonstrated the point.

Nora licks her bowl clean. She spilled some on her shirt, and she tried to lick that too!

The grand finale of this recipe is the “chocolate chips.” I would have never thought of this if not for the Lebovitz recipe. I used a Green & Blacks 80% cocoa dark chocolate bar. Higher cocoa content means less sugar, hence fewer carbs, in the chocolate. Measure out the amount you will put in the keto ice cream (it only takes a few grams, at 0.28 carbs per gram of chocolate in those bars). It melts nicely in a small silicone pinch bowl in the microwave. While the ice cream is in the machine stirring, drizzle in a stream of melted chocolate. It freezes in tiny threads as it hits the cold ice cream. Mmmm, that’s something special. I did the same on some of Nora’s raspberry ice cream another time to give her a little chocolate on top. What a treat.

This ice cream was fabulous. The infusion of real mint leaves gave it an herbal minty quality. Next time I will try to use even more mint. I held back on the sugar so it was not overly sweet. I will definitely make this again, for all of us, when my mint patch recovers.

Nutrition information for 50 g of mint ice cream. Note the different serving size--do not compare directly with other ice cream recipes here. And note that chocolate is not included. Nutrition analysis from www.caloriecount.com

Keto Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream
240 g (1 cup) Organic Valley Half and Half
480 g (2 cups) Organic Valley Heavy Whipping Cream
Pinch of salt
85 g (5 large) egg yolks
80 g (2 cups packed) mint leaves

In a medium saucepan, warm the half-and-half, 240 g (1 cup) heavy cream, salt, and mint. Once the mixture is hot and steaming, remove from heat, cover, and let stand for an hour to infuse the mint flavor.

Remove the mint with a strainer, then press down with a spatula firmly to extract as much mint flavor and color as possible. Once the flavor is squeezed out, discard the mint.

Rewarm the infused milk. In a separate bowl, whisk together the egg yolks, then slowly pour some of the warm mint mixture into the yolks, whisking constantly, then scrape the warmed yolks back into the saucepan.

Cook the custard, stirring constantly with a heatproof spatula, until the mixture thickens and coats the spatula. If using an instant read thermometer, it should read around 170ºF (77ºC). Immediately stir the mixture into the remaining 240 g (1 cup) cream, then place over an ice bath until cool.

Refrigerate the mixture thoroughly, preferably overnight, then freeze it in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s instructions.

From: http://www.davidlebovitz.com/2010/05/mint-chip-ice-cream-recipe-chocolate/

The nutrition information above is ONLY for the mint ice cream. The ice cream alone has a ratio of about 7:1, and only 0.7 carbs in a 50 g serving! You can add enough chocolate to reduce the ratio to the desired level. In the future, I will calculate the amount of chocolate I want to add per serving, measure that amount, then melt the chocolate in a silicone pinch bowl (be sure that your bowl is completely dry, as any water in the melted chocolate will cause it to seize and ruin the pourability). Pour the chocolate in threads on the serving of ice cream, stirring as you go. Wa-la, you have chocolate chips in your ice cream!

The last ice cream experiment was of the blueberry variety. It was a simple recipe, but turned out quite different than the rest.

Nutrition information for 3.5:1 Blueberry Ice Cream. Analysis provided by www.caloriecount.com

Blueberry Ice Cream
405 g (2.8 cups) fresh or frozen blueberries
720 g (3 cups) Organic Valley Heavy Whipping Cream
305 g (1.25 cups) whole milk

In addition to these ingredients, I again used Cytra to sweeten the mixture a bit, but you can use any no-carb sweetener you choose. Mix the sweetener in while you crush the berries. Then mix well with the cream and milk (I used a food processor). Then freeze in the ice cream machine.

Like the mint ice cream, I made it side-by-side with a sugar version and it turned out very differently. First, when I crushed the blueberries with sugar for the traditional recipe, the blueberries turned that keep purple-blue that I would expect from the blueberry skins. When I made Nora’s version, the Cytra did not extract the color from the blueberry skins in the same way. The mashed berries looked more green-gray with flecks of dark skin. I have not looked up the food science interaction that causes the color change in the presence of sugar, but I would love to know the secret.

Blueberry Ice Cream, 3.5:1 ratio

As with the mint ice cream recipe, Nora’s non-sugar version formed a thick frozen layer on the outside of the ice cream machine bowl. The sugared version did not do that. And the final product was quite different. Nora’s version froze absolutely solid. I have to chisel it out of the bowl to measure it, or melt it enough. If I chisel it out and mash it up, it has a very dry crystal quality about it, not at all creamy. It’s not unpleasant, but it is not like ice cream either. If you click on the picture to get a larger version, you can see that texture. It also melts quickly, so getting it in as fast as possible is key, although Nora takes care of that herself and licks the bowl clean!

Thus far, I’ve learned that cream alone does not make ice cream. Harold is right–how could I ever have doubted him. Taking sugar off the table, the recipes that included more protein were far more successful than the blueberry ice cream recipe, which was mostly cream and berries. I added whole milk there in order to get some of the milk protein, sugars and solids, but it was not enough to make a difference in the texture.

The custard-type ice creams that include egg yolks are a better bet, but also require a 2-day process because the egg yolks have to cook, then cool down enough to make the ice cream. It’s a plan-ahead endeavor, but the quality of the final product makes it worth it. I will also experiment more with Greek yogurt to see if I can get some better results. But this is all academic to Nora. If it’s called ice cream, she’s thrilled to have it.

A labor of love. Emphasis on labor.

The ketogenic diet relies on a precise measurement of macronutrients. So any recipe that results in clumps of food, particularly carby food, is a bit dangerous. I worked very hard to make sure that each scone was uniform and consistent. I will describe my process and tell you what I learned about baking for my keto kid.

This recipe is adapted from Candice’s Low Carb Recipes (blog moved to new site 4/13): http://tmstrevival.wordpress.com/). She is a baker by trade and successfully lost weight with a low carb diet, which she continues. One general lesson I have learned is to take the process seriously. When it says to use frozen butter, use frozen butter, not softened butter. We are trying to re-create baked goods that are judged by their resemblance to their carby parentage. Sometimes it takes a little extra attention to detail to use materials with a vastly different make-up to make a high-quality product.

Raspberry scones

1/2 cup (56.8 g) Bob’s Red Mill Organic Coconut Flour, divided into 6 Tbsp and 2 Tbsp
1 tbsp (10 g) Golden Flaxseed (whole)
2 teaspoons (10 g) baking powder
1/4 teaspoon (1.5 g) salt
6 Tablespoons (85.2 g) unsalted butter
60 g unsweetened raspberries
3 large (150 g) eggs
1/3 cup (80 g) Organic Valley Heavy Whipping Cream
1 teaspoon (4.2 g) pure vanilla extract

In large bowl mix 6 Tablespoons of coconut flour, flax, baking powder and salt. Set aside.

In a small bowl mix cream, eggs, and vanilla with a fork until all combined. Set aside.

Cut in FROZEN butter into your coconut flour mixture using your hands or a pastry blender until a course meal texture. I broke my pastry knife some time ago and have not replaced it. I used one of my hand mixer beaters to squash the butter into the flour and also used my hands. You can see the size of my course mixture.

Slowly add *almost* all of your liquid egg and cream mixture either mixing with hands or fork. Mixture will be runny. Add your extra 2 Tablespoons of coconut flour now and mix until thickened. Let it sit for a few moments and it will thicken as the coconut oil absorbs the liquid.

I calculated the recipe with only the batter, not the berries, and came up with 400 g of batter. Therefore it could make 20 scones of 20 g of batter each. However, after weighing the dough for each scone, I only had enough to make 18 scones of 20 g of batter each.

With each 20 g of dough that I measured, I then measured in 3 g of raspberries. Now I had 23 g of raw scone material for each one.

Here is an example of one imprecise measurement that I encountered in the overall recipe. Because the recipe calls for mixing in almost all of the wet ingredients, some of the mass is left out of the dough. I felt confident that at least I knew how much was in each scone, particularly how much raspberries were in each scone.

Place each measured dough ball on a parchment paper lined baking sheet and put them in the freezer for 20 minutes.  Try to do this process rather quickly and efficiently, because you will want them to stay cold. Next form the dough into triangles. Nora knows that scones are typically triangle shaped, and presentation is as important as taste to her. After shaping, place dough in the freezer for 20 minutes again.

Preheat oven to 425F. Brush the scones with remaining liquid cream/egg mixture.
Bake for 15-20 minutes.

Let cool. Here’s the interesting food science part. Remember that I put 23 g of scone batter and berries into each one. When I weighed them after baking, they were 19 g each, and quite uniformly so. What happened? 4 g of steam came out during baking and cooling. That’s not very much water overall, but it matters when we are weighing and serving our keto kids, depending on how sensitive your kid is.

From all of this I learned that when I put my ingredients into the recipe analyzer, it simply smashes it all together and divides by the number of servings. It is very accurate for raw things, like B^3 and Macadamia Monster Mash. But it does not consider cooking and the loss of steam, and therefore the loss of mass. Note above that the nutrition label says it is a 23 g serving, but in the caption to the nutrition label I note that it is a 19 g scone. Tricky. I have not calculated this for my other baked recipes. For my purposes I think that they are close enough because we are not using the strictest version of the keto diet, but I plan to ask our dietician if they consider these things when they make recipes. Maybe it’s close enough that it is within the margin of error.

As hard as we try, there is measurement error in everything that we feed our kids. We weigh portions out, but we did not churn the milk into butter or determine the meat-to-fat ratio in that slice of bacon. We have to watch out for the places where large and significant measurement error could creep in, particularly in the carb department, like a scone that gets 6 g of raspberries and another that gets 2 g of raspberries if the recipe was made in the standard way of mixing and baking it all together, then cutting it up.

Now the important part: yum, these scones are good. They got the approval of Anders, his friend Henry, me, and Grandma Sheryl too. They are a great option for any low carb dieter or for someone who is gluten intolerant. Coconut flour is the magic ticket. Even without added sugar and non-sugar sweeteners, they are darn tasty. Nora eats them for breakfast with her 5 g coconut oil mixed with a teaspoon of butter.

On the emotional side, it seems to really help Nora when other people get to share some of her “special” foods. She was so happy when our friend Mara, who is gluten-intolerant, enjoyed the cupcakes that I made for Nora to eat at Anders’ birthday party (I will post that recipe sometime too–when I can do a controlled weighing like this again). She kept offering another one to Mara for the joy of sharing. It helps her to feel a little more normal, while we also remind her that almost everyone has their own food issues for different reasons. Mara can’t eat wheat, I can’t eat eggs, lots of people can’t eat peanut butter, or milk, or cheese, or yogurt. I guess we are all a little bit ~different~.

When Nora first started a diet therapy, we began with the least-extreme diet that has worked for treating epilepsy: the Modified Atkins Diet (MAD). As part of my education, I borrowed the Atkins weight loss book from the library (the man knew how to sell an idea) and several Atkins/low-carb cookbooks. This is a modification of a recipe from one of those sources.

I made it quite a long time ago (which in my world, is 2 or 3 months). Nora requested it again last week, so I made it up for her. She really likes it. I don’t like the taste of the rice protein powder, but my taste doesn’t matter one bit!

Nutritional information for Cheddar Bread. Based on 8 servings. Analysis by www.caloriecount.com

Cheddar Bread

1/3 c (37.4 g) Bob’s Red mill Soy Flour
1/3 c (42.6 g) Source Natural’s Brown Rice Protein Powder
1/2 tsp baking powder
2 large eggs
1 Tbsp (14 g) Greek Gods Traditional Plain Greek Yogurt*
1 Tbsp (14 g) English Double Devon Cream*
2 tbsp (27 g) olive oil
38 g shredded cheddar cheese

Preheat oven to 375. Butter 8×4 inch loaf pan.

Combine soy flour, rice protein and baking powder in a small bowl.

With hand mixer, combine eggs, yogurt, double cream and olive oil until smooth. Add dry ingredients and beat until just combined. Fold in half of cheddar.

Pour batter into pan and sprinkle remaining cheddar on top. Bake 25 minutes or until cake tester comes out clean.

Refrigerate.

*The original recipe called for sour cream, and I did make it with sour cream the first time. This time I did not have any sour cream at home, so I substituted and adjusted the recipe. If you want to use sour cream instead, substitute 2 T for all of the yogurt and English Double Cream. Re-calculate nutritional information.

As always, I gave you the brands that I used for each ingredient. If you use a different brand of soy flour or protein powder, you should adjust your nutritional information accordingly. I don’t see why whey protein powder wouldn’t work, but I have not tried it.

Nutrition based on 8 slices, at 30 g each. Nora normally eats a smaller slice, maybe 15 g. But I have found that if I make portion sizes too small in this recipe analysis tool, it will drop small values, like fiber. We both use the fiber number to see the “net carbs” in a food, and to keep track of how much fiber Nora is getting daily. So sometimes my recipes intentionally show larger portions, and I re-calculate based on this info for Nora.

Nora’s typical 15 g serving would be:
0.65 g net carbs
2.35 g protein
4.1 g fat
0.25 g fiber

And I would normally serve with a teaspoon of butter. The bread is not crumbly (hmmm, could it be the fat and cheese?) so it is nice to put a slice in the toaster (carefully) or under the broiler after taking it out of the fridge. Nora really digs the “toast” consistency.

The caloriecount website gave this recipe a B-! That is the highest rating I’ve seen for any of Nora’s recipes. Normally, they get a D. Good points are always that they are low in sugar (yeah) and bad points are that they are high in saturated fat (yeah too). It is interesting to always see how this external “health” and weight loss site views the diet that is so effective for my kid. If only they knew.

Nora needs several supplements everyday, some multiple times a day. It’s tedious to crush tablets and add them to foods on a meal-by-meal basis, so here’s one of my time saving processes to ease the daily grind.

Peanut butter (B^3) and apples (10 g = 1.25 g carbs) is Nora’s morning snack, and nobody better mess with it. It’s also a great fat and supplement delivery system.

First, I make a big batch of B^3 (that’s B-cubed, aka, B*B*B for those not math-inclined). Peanut butter, sunflower seed butter, and butter. Give it a bit of body and fiber by adding some flax:

Nutrition information for 1 Tbsp B^3 from www.caloriecount.com

B^3
1 cup butter
1/2 cup Adams 100% Natural Peanut Butter
1/2 cup Sunbutter Organic Sunflower Seed Spread
1/2 C Bob’s Red Mill flax meal

Soften by bringing all ingredients to room temperature, then blend well. I am careful not to whip too much air into the mixture, as I measure it by the tablespoon. Of course, it may also be weighed for precision.

I think this completely filled up a quart jar last time I made it. Refrigerate and it will keep a long time. At 1 tablespoon a day, it lasts a while.

The B^3 is now ready to be made into 1 tablespoon servings and loaded with supplements. It’s a great delivery system because the taste of the supplements is masked by the nut butters.

Adding supplements to B^3

Nora gets 1/4 of an adult Centrum every day (her diet does not guarantee her the required vitamins and minerals), 1 tablet of carnitine (an amino acid that helps with processing fats), and 200 mg of folic acid (helps with thinning hair due to the medication). She also gets calcium supplements, but we do not add them here. Any chewable kids vitamins have carbs to make them tasty, so those are out of the picture for Nora. Of course, we can’t expect a 3 year old to swallow pills, so we crush them into a powder with a small mortar and pestle and incorporate them into her food.

I start an assembly line process by measuring 1 tablespoon of B^3 into 4 small dishes. I crush 1 day’s supplement tablets into a powder and add it to each bowl of B^3. That way, she gets a consistent daily dose. I mix in the supplements and put the little bowls in the freezer to harden.

Frozen B^3 + Supplements

When the mixture is hard (it does not have to be frozen solid), I use a melon baller to scoop it all up into a little ball.

Then I put each ball into a container and keep it in the refrigerator. That keeps the mixture solid enough to stay separate, but gets pliable quickly when it is ready to eat.

It is a bit of work, but I love having little balls of B^3 to grab out of the fridge when I’m preparing each day’s meals. Meal preparation is enough of a chore without getting out 3 more supplements to add to Nora’s food. We can put a few week’s worth in the fridge and keep it on hand.

Finished B^3 + Supplements

Productivity is happiness. Maybe that statement is a little too strong. Concentrated tedium is preferable to daily tedium.

This diet has not been challenging enough, so Nora’s now going raw food vegan too.

Happy April Fools Day!

I did find a fabulous hummus-substitute for Nora on the raw food vegan website of some of our favorite musicians, Jónsi of Sigur Rós and his partner Alex. Together they make music and art in Reykjavík, Iceland, and shared some of their raw food vegan recipes on their website. Click on the cool hand-drawn cookbook on the right to “flip” through the recipes. They’ve also made videos to demonstrate their “cooking” techniques (remember–this is raw food). I find it touchingly earnest and adorable somehow.

Macadamia nuts are often used in the ketogenic diet because they have a tremendous amount of “good” vegetable fats and low carbs. And they are totally delicious and cost their weight in gold (almost). I keep them in the fridge to be sure to keep them fresh. Nora has not been a huge fan of eating the nuts themselves, but I’ve tried to get them into her diet in other creative ways, like this.

I like the idea of putting Macadamia Monster Mash in half of a small pepper and broiling some cheese over the top (damn, I forgot about that vegan thing. And that raw food thing). But because Nora is only 3, she still isn’t a big fan of mixing her foods. One day she will appreciate a more complex presentation.

Here’s the recipe (I amended it a bit for Nora’s taste) and video for Macadamia Monster Mash:

Macadamia Monster Mash

Nutrition Information for Macadamia Monster Mash. From www.caloriecount.com

200 g macadamia nuts (about 1 cup, but for the diet I weigh it for precision)
1 tsp dried parsley
1 Tbsp lemon juice
1/3 c water

Mix in food processor or blender until creamy.

0.5 g net carbs
0.7 g fiber
0.7 g protein
6.3 g fat

The original recipe adds a clove of garlic and salt, which will slightly alter the nutritional information.

Nutritional information is based on a 12 g serving, about 1 tablespoon, but I weigh it on the scale instead of measuring it with a tablespoon.

Served on a flacker or low-carb tortilla, roll a little ball of Madacamia Monster Mash in some shredded cheddar cheese, spread on a slice of turkey and roll it up, or just eat it with a spoon. I’ve also mixed her coconut oil into it for easy serving.

One little sidelight: when I was making the recipe the first time, I realized that although water does not add any macro-nutrients, I need to specify the amount of water that I use in the recipe to get the correct nutritional information per serving. Why? Because the water adds weight/mass to the serving, in a sense “diluting” the other ingredients. A 12 g serving with water has different values than a 12 g serving without water. Details, details.

Yesterday was baking day again, and Nora requested this Hazelnut Applesauce Bread. It’s the 3rd time I’ve made it–a hit! Nora enjoys it for breakfast, topped with a mixture of her morning coconut oil mixed with a bit of butter.

The recipe calls for baking it in a small loaf pan, but I find it a little unwieldy to store and cut in that form so I tried baking it in a wide shallow baking pan instead. It came out nicely. With all of the fat, the edges get kind of browned and crispy. Mmmm.

This recipe is an adaptation of Candice’s Low Carb Almond Flour Applesauce Spice Pound Cake [11/13: her site has moved and that recipe seems to be gone: http://tmstrevival.wordpress.com/]. If you look at her recipes, she always uses Splenda or another no-carb sweetener. We try not to add any of those sweeteners to Nora’s diet. It’s unclear whether they interfere with ketosis for her, and we don’t want to take any chances. I also don’t care for their flavor (they always have a bitter edge to me). I try to choose recipes with naturally sweet and delicious ingredients so that extra sweeteners are not necessary. Nora is not accustomed to sweet things anymore, so this bread (and her other baked goods) taste sweet enough to her. We call it “applesauce bread” for the sales pitch, and the applesauce does add a nice touch of sweetness, with the nutty taste and cinnamon flavors as well. We are going for flavor, not sweetness.

The original recipe calls for almond flour. The first time I made it, I was out of almond flour but had ample hazelnut flour. Did you know that 99% of all hazelnuts grown in the United States come from the the Willamette Valley in Oregon–right here where we make our home? And when you move to Oregon, you learn that hazelnuts are also called “filberts.” Know the local code to find the local deliciousness.

It is possible to substitute any nut flours for these kinds of recipes, but remember to always re-check the nutritional information. To boost the fiber and cut a little more carbs, I also substituted 1/4 cup flax meal for some of the nut flour, which I do with most recipes.

One additional word of caution for keto-families, which applies to all of my recipes with nutritional information: Make sure to re-calculate nutritional information for the ingredients that you use if they are different from mine. I use Bob’s Red Mill nut and seed flours. Check the nutritional information for the applesauce you use and make sure it is unsweetened. If you are grinding your own nut flours (which you can do in a coffee grinder), you can weigh the quantities to be sure of your measurements. I am measuring things in cups here, but as you know that creates more room for error. If you measure according to the recipe, weigh, and calculate based on weight you will get more precise nutritional information for the recipe that you feed your child.

I also use an online recipe analyzer because we don’t use a keto-calculator (we are on a “modified” keto diet without as much rigor as administered by most neurologist’s offices). My nutritional labels are for your reference to determine if you want to try a recipe.

Hazelnut Applesauce Bread

Hazelnut Applesauce Bread. Nutritional analysis from www.caloriecount.com

3/4 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
5 large eggs
1/3 cup UNSWEETENED apple sauce
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1.75 cups Hazelnut Meal/Flour
0.25 cups flaxseed meal
1 T Organic Coconut Flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg

Preheat oven to 350F

Grease & flour a 8”x4” loaf pan with butter and dust with coconut flour.

In small bowl combine hazelnut flour, coconut flour, baking powder and spices. Set aside.

Beat butter with an electric mixer until fluffy and smooth. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add vanilla extract and apple sauce and continue to beat until smooth.

Add hazelnut flour mixture to egg mixture. Mix on low until combined. Then turn mixer up to high and beat until smooth.

Pour into prepared loaf pan and bake at 350°F for about 1 hour or until done. (When I made it in the wide shallow pan, it cooked for about 45 minutes).

Let cool in pan for about 10 minutes then take out and and cool on wire rack. If you don’t take it out of the pan, it will solidify in there and will break if you take it out when cold. There is a lot of butter in this recipe and it does solidify.

Note that 1 serving is 16 g (I cut and weigh each piece of bread). It’s a rather small but dense serving. The recipe creates 48 servings at 16 g each, so it’s wise to freeze half of a loaf because it will get moldy before we use all of the 48 servings (unless the rest of the family is eating it too!)

A 16 g serving contains:
0.7 g net carbs
0.8 g fiber
1.4 g protein
6.2 g fat