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.