They are good, like Krispy Kream. You can tell because the words all start with K’s.

Krepe Kids

We are calling them crepes, because we usually fill them with ham and cheese and roll them up. But the coconut meal gives them a little more body than a real crepe, and they are a little spongy too, so they are kind of a cross between a crepe and a pancake.

They make a great meal because Anders and Ted like them too (but they have too many eggs for me. My own little food glitch).

Tonight Nora had some extra carbs coming, so we filled them with cheddar and 18 g of apple slices! She normally gets about 10 g of apple at a time. What a treat. Of course, she wanted to separate it and eat the apples first, so I let her eat 1/2 of the apples, then made her eat 1/2 of the crepe. Although I didn’t hear any complaining and she ate up every bite.

They would also work great as a dessert or breakfast crepe with some sliced strawberries and whipped cream. Nora claims to dislike whipped cream, but it is because I ruined it by trying to hide her medicine in it once. And she never forgets. Whipped cream will be ruined for her forever. What a shame.

I can also make a batch of batter, which makes about 6 crepes, and use 1/2 at one meal and save the rest for another meal. That helps with the meal-time-crunch on some days.

I have had some problems with getting them to turn out right. It’s the flipping. Tonight I got it right, so here’s my procedure: I use my small frying pan and melt plenty of butter (1/2 T) over medium. Just when the butter gets bubbly, I make sure that it is coating the pan and pour 1/4 cup of batter all around and turn to coat the pan with batter. Maybe it helps if the batter is cold to start–I haven’t experimented on that point much. The batter and butter will co-mingle (good for those ketones). When the crepe is getting quite dry on top, loosen all around the edges. If it’s working, it should be able to move freely in the pan. Then flip and cook to brown on the other side. Right after flipping, put in the fillings to melt cheese and warm everything up. Roll immediately; they will begin to break if you try to roll them when cool. Or just fold in half or serve as a pancake.

And note that these are also gluten free! Coconut meal makes them taste sweetish and contains a lot of fiber. For anyone who wants to try a lower-fat version, use milk instead of heavy cream.

Nutrition facts for Keto Krepes. 1 serving = 1/4 cup of batter. Analysis from caloriecount.com

Keto-Krepes
Makes 1.5 cups of batter = 6 servings of 1/4 c batter each
4 eggs
1/4 tsp pure vanilla extract
pinch nutmeg
1/4 C heavy cream
1/4 C water
1/4 C Coconut Flour (Bob’s Red Mill)
1/2 Tbsp butter

See procedure below.

Keto Crepes under the gram recipe, updated 2/24/2014.

In grams, makes 7 servings, 49.4 g each:

28 g Organic Coconut Flour
200 g eggs
0.5 g pure vanilla extract
0.1 g nutmeg
60 g Heavy Whipping Cream
50 g water
7 g Butter

Whisk eggs, vanilla, nutmeg and cream. Sift and stir in coconut meal. Let stand 5-10 minutes for coconut meal to absorb the liquid. Thin with water to your desired consistency.
Heat frying pan to medium and melt butter. Pour 1/4 C batter into hot pan, spreading to desired thin and cover bottom of pan.
Cook until top is drying, flip and fill with ham and cheese, etc.
Remove from pan and roll or fold over.

October 2014 Note: This is one of my first attempts to make a cookie recipe for my child on the ketogenic diet. It was better than I expected, but certainly not the same as a non-keto cookie. Coconut meal, in particular, has a very different texture than flour and some people don’t like it. Because this blog is also something of a record of our lessons learned and progress, I choose to keep it here even though it was not a perfect replica of a non-keto peanut butter cookie. You could also try the linked recipe, which was the original inspiration. The recipes developed more recently have been much more successful, so I recommend going to the 2013 or 2014 recipes that have been tried and true. 

One word on Netiquette: Remember that when you are commenting on a blog, you are communicating with a real person and you should be respectful and aware of the impact of your words. Several comments on this post were not approved because they were rude or disrespectful. In all communications, be kind and thoughtful; write and speak in a way that you would like to be addressed. I’m a mom, not a professional cook. I’m doing my best.

Mmmm, cookies. What else is there to say?

I guess I should say that these also contain 4.5 g of coconut oil, the prime MCT oil. Nora gets 5 g of coconut oil, 3 times per day. What a nice way to get it.

The cookies also have 1 gram of fiber each. Coconut meal has very low net carbs because of all of the fiber.

I have tried a few peanut butter cookie recipes. My recipes have improved by modifying the recipes from this great low-carb baker blog. She has many amazing recipes, some of which will not work for Nora because they still have too many carbs, but if you are doing low-carb or gluten-free baking, I would highly recommend her recipes.

http://tmstrevival.wordpress.com/ [link updated on 11/26/2013]

Peanut Butter Coconut Cookies

Nutrition Information for Peanut Butter Coconut Cookies from caloriecount.com

½ cup Adams Natural Peanut Butter
¼ cup butter
2 eggs
2/3 cup coconut oil
1/2 tsp pure vanilla extract
½ tsp baking soda
¼ tsp sea salt
1/2 c Coconut Flour (Bob’s Red Mill)

Cream together PB, butter, eggs, coconut oil and vanilla.
Mix with flour, baking soda and salt.
Form balls of 1 tablespoon and press with fork on to baking sheet (makes 32 cookies).
Bake 11 minutes at 350.

Nora says "yum!" to baked eggs.

Nora has enjoyed baked eggs on 2 occasions, which qualifies for a recipe post.

I’ve seen lots of baked eggs recipes–and they don’t even need to be modified for Nora! I make 3 portions at a time for the boys too (I can’t eat eggs, so I’m the one with the alternative meal on these nights). Next time I will crack 2 eggs into Ted’s cup for a larger portion. You could also throw in a bit of veggies, salmon, or vary the cheese option to your taste, although within the acceptable ranges for someone on the keto diet. Also be aware of the egg size that you are using. The nutrition facts here assume a large egg.

Nutrition analysis for baked eggs from caloriecount.com

Baked Eggs
1 egg
1 Tbsp heavy cream
7 g grated cheddar cheese
pinch of thyme

Lightly grease a small ovenproof ceramic dish or ramekin with butter. Pour in 1/2 Tbsp of cream, sprinkle in 1/2 of the cheddar cheese and a dash of thyme. Crack the egg into the dish, and top with the remaining 1/2 T heavy cream, cheese, and sprinkle again with thyme and salt or pepper to taste.

While preparing the egg cups, boil a teapot of water and preheat the oven to 375º F. In a large heatproof pan (I use my glass cake pan), put in the egg cups and place in the oven. Then pour the water from the teapot into the large pan, surrounding the egg cups (I don’t like to risk sloshing or dropping a heavy pan full of hot water). Bake for 10-14 minutes, depending on how firm you like your egg yolks. When finished, I take the ramekins out with a big tongs first and cool a bit, then take the pan of hot water out of the oven later. Safety first!

For dinner, Nora had her baked egg, an 1/8 of her high-protein, high-fiber tortilla with 2 tsp of double cream cheese mixed with 1 tsp of ground flax and a sprinkle of cinnamon, and 21 g of red pepper.

The Brekkens have now found another veggie option. Ted’s words. We will not get any more excited than that, because it is still kale.

But it is kale that we are now happy to eat. Yesterday when I was weighing a piece of kale for Nora, Ted later admitted that he thought (but did not say):  “8 grams of kale, 10 grams of yuck.” I do take the blame for ruining kale, because I probably never cooked it right. After he tasted this recipe, he admitted that this is an acceptable way to make kale. And both kids liked it too! We could eat 1 bunch of kale at one meal with this recipe.

Kale isn’t a superstar for Nora’s diet, but it is full of wonderful veggie goodness so it’s nice to fit it in. It is very similar to the seaweed snacks that she likes, and made at home.

Find the recipe here, to give a well-deserved nod to the original post: http://www.weeatreal.com/2009/11/roasted-kale-chips.html

To measure it for Nora, I weighed 1 piece of raw kale (which came in at 6 g) and used the nutrition breakdown for that, which was 0.5 carbs (0.1 fiber), 0.2 protein, 0 fat (although the olive oil adds a bit of fat). Because it is baked in this recipe, it becomes like thin paper and the only thing that it loses is water, so the nutrition information from the raw kale should be the same as the baked kale. Please correct me if that is a mistaken assumption.

We work so hard on getting the right balance of food into Nora in a palate- and socially-pleasing way, but we don’t always succeed. There are so many details to consider, and sometimes things are still just not right.

On Valentine’s Day, our family was invited to celebrate the 7th birthday of our great friend, Mackenzie. I knew in advance that they would be serving pizza and cheesecake, so I planned to bring everything I needed for Nora to eat pizza too. I also made some mini-pumpkin cheesecakes, which are ever so yummy.

However, the planning did not start with just the dinner and dessert foods, it started that morning when I made Nora’s breakfast and lunch. I was careful to not give her too many carbs in the morning, considering that the pizza and cheesecake would be a fairly carby dinner. When it came time to pack for the party, I realized she had already blown through her protein requirements for the day–she had been really hungry that afternoon and I deftly avoided carbs! So no meat on the pizza, and I actually had to cut the pizza portion in half to take out some protein. For every extra gram of protein, I had to find 3 grams of fat to feed her, and that just wasn’t going to happen. In addition, the keto-diet is also calorie controlled, as too many calories can interfere with ketosis. Things got complicated, but I kept 1 mini-cheesecake in the plan at all costs.

There was no fuss about the dinner, but the cake was a different story. Michael is a fabulous cook, so his cheesecake is divine and it was topped with mounds of blueberries. Nora couldn’t take the sight of it, even with her yummy mini-pumpkin cheesecake before her. She is only 3, and sees that she is getting something that is qualitatively different from everyone else. She cried, she whined, she pleaded for a taste of the “real” cake. She would not taste her own cheesecake. I carried her around and told her that I know it’s hard and talked to her about why she is on a special diet. She calmed down, but it’s just so hard to see others eating something so beautiful that you can’t have.

Mama learned a lesson from this. I need to get more details. I could have given her a few blueberries on top of her cheesecake, had I known in advance and planned for it. By the time she got her cheesecake, she had eaten all of her carbs for the day. I had nothing left to give her. I had actually considered making her cheesecake in a pan and cutting wedges instead of doing a mini-cupcake, but I was afraid that the sliver she would get would look even more pathetic than a mini-cupcake. But the blueberries could have fixed it.

Maybe. Or maybe not. Nora also cried when Mackenzie opened presents, because she wanted to get presents too, especially cool dress-up girl sticker books. Nora is 3, and it comes with the territory.

When she finally tried a bite of her cheesecake, she declared it “yummy!” and ate the whole thing. But I have to remember that the emotional impact of the food is in the appearance, and that just as important as the taste and nutritional profile.

“Yummy” Mini-Pumpkin Cheesecakes (without tears)

Mini-Pumpkin Cheesecake Muffins. Nutritional analysis from www.caloriecount.com

6 oz Plain cream cheese
2 Tbsp Traditional Plain Greek Yogurt
2 Tbsp English Double Devon Cream
1/4 cup pumpkin puree
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/8 tsp nutmeg
1 egg (room temperature)
1/2 tsp pure vanilla extract

Preheat oven 300F.

Beat cream cheese with mixer until smooth.
Add yogurt and double cream, beat until combined. Scrap down bowl.
With mixer running add cinnamon & nutmeg.
Add egg and vanilla. Mix till smooth. Scrap down bowl again making sure mixture has no lumps.
Last add pumpkin puree and mix until combined.

Divide evenly into 24 lined mini-muffin cups. Bake for about 15 minutes. When done, crack open oven door and let cheesecake cool in oven.

It is indeed time to refresh some of Nora’s mainstay foods. This morning I discovered that we were nearly out of our peanut butter-butter mix. This is a quick and easy way to deliver a lot of fat and it’s perfect for delivering her crushed multivitamin (1/2 of an adult Centrum every other day. Guess what–kid’s vitamins have carbs!)

Adding the flaxseed meal adds fiber. All of the carbs in flax meal come from fiber, so adding a bit of flax doubles the fiber (0.8 g fiber per serving) without added net carbs. Sneaking in as much fiber as possible helps with the inevitable constipation on this diet. And it gives the mix a little thickness that is nice for serving.

Serve it with a few apple slivers (12-15 g gives you 2-3 thin slices, 1.5 g net carbs), or on a flacker.

Peanut butter-butter (makes about 20 tablespoons):

Recipe analyzer from caloriecount.com. Net carbs = 0.8 g

1/2 c butter (softened for easy stirring)
1/2 c natural peanut butter (I use creamy Adams)
1/4 c Flaxseed Meal

Mix well and serve. 1 Tablespoon per serving.

Net carbs = 0.8 per Tbsp

Thursday seems to be the day to refresh some of Nora’s foods, and tonight I am baking. I have had a lot of success with some low-carb recipes so far. They replace regular flour with nut meals to reduce the carbs and increase the protein and fat (Bob’s Red Mill makes all kinds of nut flours). Coconut flour is awesome because it has a light texture, nice flavor, very high fiber, and therefore low net carbs. Nut flours taste great compared to wheat flours, so you don’t miss the sugar so much. I do not add any no-carb/artificial sweeteners. Using tasty whole foods tends to result in a tasty muffin.

Keto-Pumpkin Mini-Muffins

Nora scarfed down this muffin (actually, she also ate most of the paper trying to eat the crumbs off.) Anders deemed it “too nutty.” I thought it was nice, but very soft. It’s not grainy at all.

I have had to further adapt some low-carb recipes because they are written for adults. Even on a low-carb diet, adults get far more than 10 carbs per day. One easy fix is to cut the portion size. Tonight I’m making mini-muffins for the first time.

Low-carb baking also tends to be gluten-free, but the converse is not necessarily true. Lots of gluten-free baking mixes are very high in carbs because they use things like tapioca. So feel free to use these for a gluten-free diet, but remember to check the fat and calories if you are concerned about portion sizes.

Here’s the recipe I made tonight. I don’t remember where I first found it (maybe on a keto/MAD diet website), but I have had to tinker with it to get it right.

Keto-Pumpkin Mini-Muffins (makes 24-25)

Keto-Pumpkin Mini-Muffins (recipe analysis from caloriecount.com). Note that net carbs = 0.9 (calculate total carbs minus fiber).

3 eggs
1/4 c melted butter
1/2 c pumpkin puree
1/4 c Plain Traditional Greek Yogurt
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp pure vanilla extract
3/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 c Hazelnut Flour (or Almond Flour)
2.5 T Coconut Flour
up to 2 T water

Beat eggs well with electric mixer. Add butter, pumpkin, yogurt, cinnamon, vanilla.
Sift together baking powder and nut flours. Let stand for coconut flour to absorb liquids. Add water a bit at a time for appropriate consistency.
Ladle about 4 teaspoons of batter into each lined mini-muffin tin and bake at 350, ~ 15-20 min.

——————————

When topped with 1/2 T of Double-cream-cheese (equal parts Primrose Cream Cheese and Double Devonshire Cream), nutrition breakdown:
Net carbs: 1.15 g
Protein: 1.45 g
Fat: 6.75
Ratio: 2.6:1
Perfect with a cup of tea and cream!