Snow days! Two days off school leading up to a weekend, playing in the snow and lots of together time means baking time to keep everyone happy and satisfied.

Nora requested toasting bread for PBJ sandwiches. Anders requested blueberry muffins. But I knew that once Anders had blueberry muffins Nora would want blueberry muffins, so I pulled out The Joy of Gluten-Free, Sugar-Free Baking and tweaked their recipe for Blueberry Hazelnut Muffins to make everyone happy.

And oh. my. good. ness. They are so good!

I made one batch (below) and took out enough batter for 3 muffins for Nora, in pink and purple silicone muffin cups. Then I put a bit of sugar into the leftover batter for the rest of us and re-mixed, added in the blueberries, and put ours in yellow and green silicone cups. They are nutty delicious, either warm and cold.

I’m also sure that the original recipe using milk of any kind instead of heavy cream would also be very good. If you’re into that kind of thing.

Nutrition information for one Blueberry Almond Muffin, by www.caloriecount.com

Blueberry Almond Muffins
(makes 10 muffins)
90 g raw egg (2 eggs)
115 g (1/2 C) Organic Valley Heavy Whipping Cream
7 g (1.5 tsp) vanilla extract
5 g (1 tsp) lemon juice
85 g (3/4 C) Bob’s Red Mill hazelnut flour
85 g (3/4 C) Bob’s Red Mill almond meal/flour
30 g (1/4 C) slivered or sliced almonds
6 g (1 Tbsp) baking powder
3 g (1/4 tsp) salt
40 g frozen blueberries (1/4 cup, or more if diet allows)

Measure egg, cream, vanilla and lemon juice into mixer. If you want to add some liquid stevia or other carb-free sweetener, add it now as well. Mix thoroughly on low in electric mixer, or by hand.

In a separate bowl, combine nut flours, almonds, baking powder, and salt. If you want to add a powdered no-carb sweetener, add it here. Mix well. Add the dry ingredient mixture to the wet ingredients and mix on medium very well, one to two minutes. You want to beat a little air into it to fluff up your muffins. These ingredients are a lot of heavy lifting for the baking powder.

Measure 43 g of batter into each muffin cup. Then add 4 g of frozen blueberries to each cup, pushing them into the batter and smoothing over the top.

Bake at 350° for about 35 minutes or until golden brown on top and springy to the touch.

These are 2.17:1 ratio. Served with 25 g Organic Valley Heavy Cream plus 1 drop of vanilla flavoring and a thinned with a bit of water to make “milk” for a 3.5:1 ratio.

Now we are snowed in and need more baking supplies to make more of these! They will go too fast!

I like to cook, therefore I like to listen to the Splendid Table. When I saw this Almond Florentine recipe on their website, I knew it would be keto-possible. Worked like a charm!

It is so easy, delicious and look at that fancy little cookie. Who could resist? It was a simple way to make an elegant holiday treat for Nora, and a batch with a little sugar for the rest of us!

A tip of you are making them for the whole family: reduce the sugar by at least half. I reduced the sugar a bit, and found them very very sweet. The orange still comes out, but I would like to taste the almond flavor too. The sugar is only for flavor, because Nora’s came out fine with no sugar at all.

One more tip: Kids like to zest oranges with a cheese grater or zester. Anders did the whole orange for me. Just make sure that they get the colored peel and avoid the white pith. Get them busy in the kitchen!

Nutrition information for 1 almond florentine cookie (recipe makes 10). Nutrition information provided by www.caloriecount.com

Almond & Orange Florentines
(makes 10 servings, 1.43:1 ratio)
30 g Egg whites
100 g Sliced almonds
2 g Orange zest

Preheat the oven to 300°F. Line a heavy baking sheet with a silicone mat or parchment paper brushed lightly with vegetable oil.

Measure and briefly beat the egg whites. Then gently mix them with the sliced almonds and orange zest. Measure 13 g portions of the mix to make little mounds on the lined pan, spaced a bit apart. Dip a fork in a small bowl of water and flatten each mound. Make them as thin as possible without big gaps between the almond slices.

Bake for about 12 minutes, until the cookies are golden brown. Cool completely before serving.

Nora’s cookies on left, rest of family’s on the right.

You can add a drizzle of high-quality dark chocolate for extra flavor. I use Green & Black’s 85% dark chocolate. Melt a square in a small silicone pinch bowl by putting it in the microwave for 30 seconds. Check and microwave again briefly if necessary to melt it.

Put one cookie on the gram scale and tare it. Drizzle the melted chocolate on to the cookie until you reach the desired amount. I used 1.5 grams of chocolate on Nora’s, which added 0.41 g carbs, 0.15 g protein, 0.75 g carbs (9 calories, 1.33:1 ratio).

The ratio is very low for her, so we make “hot chocolate” out of heavy cream and a pinch of cocoa powder, steamed with the espresso machine’s attachment. Lovely holiday treat.

Oh panna cotta! Where have you been hiding for the last 2 years? Why has it taken so long to discover you?

I’ve been a little obsessed with a cookbook put out by a fabulous restaurant in Portland, Toro Bravo. I haven’t even eaten there personally, but I’ve heard a lot about it. One of my life goals is to eat there. It’s 2 hours away, and often a 2 hour wait. It’s an attainable life goal; I like to have a few like that.

I’m reading this amazing, honest, detailed and hilarious cookbook, which has all of 7 dessert recipes, and start reading about panna cotta. John Gorham, owner, chef and author (who is free with cussing), tells about tasting the best ever panna cotta made by a pastry chef he worked with. The pastry chef replied:

This is the simplest recipe known to man. You can’t fuck it up. You can’t make it not amazing. It has four ingredients and takes five minutes and is foolproof so long as you pay attention.

Nora’s Thanksgiving panna cotta, extra fancy.

I’ve made custard. I’ve made ice cream. I’ve heated and stirred and cooled cream-based desserts. Panna cotta means “cooked cream.” I just assumed that something so Italian and so revered had to be difficult. The secret is out, and I’m making panna cotta. It was our Thanksgiving dessert.

The beautiful thing about panna cotta is that it doesn’t require sugar to make food-science magic. For ice cream, you need sugar to lower the freezing point. In baked goods, sugar plays a role in texture. In jams it makes the pectin gel. But all panna cotta really needs is cream and gelatin, and it gives back a soft luscious creamy dessert that can be flavored any way you want it.

The Toro Bravo recipe calls for gelatin sheets, which he claims are the key to success but require attention to detail. Contrary to the pastry chef’s opinion, it is “fuckupable” (his word, I’m just quoting here). I couldn’t find gelatin sheets at our fancy grocery store and I’m an old hand at powdered gelatin, so I found a recipe from another of my favorite chef-bloggers, David Lebovitz (and his recipe). He uses powered gelatin, and that’s good enough for me.

I’m up to 6 ingredients here. You have to use water with the powered gelatin, so that adds 1. I also included a bit of that whey protein I’m trying to use up. This recipe has so much fat that adding enough berries to get it to a 3.5:1 ratio was a heck of a lot of carbs at a time for Nora. The whey protein is undetectable in the panna cotta, but provides some needed protein to lower the ratio.

I used blueberries because Nora loves them and they are beautiful, but you can use any berries you like. Just adjust the amount of berries to get the correct nutritional breakdown. Blueberries are the highest-carb berry that we use, so if I substituted strawberry or raspberry it would be even more berrylicious!

Nutrition information for 1 serving of Blueberry Panna Cotta (recipe makes 8 servings). Nutrition information by www.caloriecount.com

Blueberry Panna Cotta
(makes 8 servings)
250 g Organic Valley heavy whipping cream
180 g Frozen blueberries
3 g Vanilla extract
2 g Gelatine powder
40 g Cold water
4 g Ultimate Nutrition whey protein powder

Warm and cream, vanilla and blueberries together in a small saucepan until the blueberries start to give up their juice and all is warm. Blend and mash them together so that they are well distributed.

When making a batch recipe, I’m concerned that one of the servings will be carb-heavy and often add the carb component separately to each serving. You can certainly warm the blueberries separately and divide them evenly on top of the cooled panna cotta, which I would recommend if your kid is very sensitive or just starting the diet. You need to be sure that every serving is what it says it is. I’m now comfortable doing this for Nora, but I was not always and I’m still careful.

Measure the cold water into a medium sized bowl, so that the water is broad but not very deep. Evenly sprinkle the gelatin powder over the surface of the water and let it sit, undisturbed, for 5 to 10 minutes.

If you want to be able to turn your panna cotta out on to a plate to serve, lightly grease 8 small cups with coconut oil. I just served ours in the cups. We used wine glasses for our fancy Thankgiving dessert, but I did the rest in ramekins and small tea cups.

Pour the warm cream mixture into the water and gelatin and stir well, so that the gelatin can dissolve completely and evenly. You won’t be able to tell, so stir a little longer than you normally would just to be sure.

Divide evenly into the 8 prepared cups, about 60 g each. Depending on how long you warmed the cream, you might have lost a bit of water. You could measure them at 59 g each to be safe and not come up short. If you incorporated the blueberries into the cream, make sure you get about the same number of chunks in each cup (this will depend on how big your blueberries are. If you are really uptight, count them and divide by 8!)

Chill for at least 2 hours to set until firm. If you make David Lebovitz’s recipe for the rest of the family, I think he skimps a bit on the gelatin, or ours just had to sit much longer to get a firm gel. Add a bit more gelatin than he suggests if you want to be able to eat it sooner rather than later.

One last tip: If your cream is clumpy and separated, you will probably get a thin layer of grainy butter at the top of your panna cotta. It’s doesn’t ruin it, but you should know. Keep the lumps out if you can.

It’s been cold here with beautiful blue skies. How cold? The chickens’ water was frozen this morning. It’s cold for Corvallis.

It turned out so blue from the blueberries!

It’s also cold season. Nora came home with a scratchy voice, wracking cough and low fever yesterday, but thankfully she is in good spirits today. Anders woke up with a fever and has spent most of the day dozing. Poor kid. Now they are re-watching The Sound of Music. That will keep them quiet and still for 3 hours.

To warm up in the morning, I made Nora this warm Flax Blueberry Cereal, inspired by the flax cereal in The Keto Cookbook. Yes, it has protein powder in it, from the big jug I am trying to use up, 1 gram at a time. You may omit it and adjust your recipe! Nora loved it and licked the bowl clean. This formulation is 3.5:1.

One recipe Flax Blueberry Cereal, analysis by www.caloriecount.com

Flax Blueberry Cereal
8 g Bob’s Red Mill flaxseed meal
5 g Coconut oil
19 g Organic Valley Heavy Whipping Cream
12 g Frozen blueberries
5 g Walnuts, in pieces
1 g Ultimate Nutrition whey protein powder
Dash of cinnamon
Drop or two pure vanilla extract
Pinch of salt

Measure all ingredients into a small bowl. Microwave for 30 seconds, stir, repeat until combined and thick like oatmeal.

If it gets to thick, add a bit of hot water to thin.

It’s a bit much to measure out on a busy morning, so I plan to mix up the dry ingredients for several separate servings and store in small baggies. Then I can just add the coconut oil and cream each morning, microwave and serve.