Keto Friendly Chocolate and PB Ice Cream Sandwich

I modified a recipe from: https://healthyrecipesblogs.com/keto-chocolate-cookies/#wprm-recipe-container-18137for the chocolate cookies. I didn’t put any chocolate chips in the cookies (cookies ended up being rich enough + it brought the carbs down a little bit) and used a little less than ½ cup of cocoa powder (the taste was strong enough for me with more like 1/3 cup of cocoa powder). I also put the water in the mixture in the same step and it didn’t seem to affect the texture of the cookie. I also made the cookies a little bigger than the recipe called for so the serving size should be more like 16 than 18.

For the peanut butter “ice cream” I created the following recipe:

Peanut Butter Ice cream/Mousse

Ingredients:

1 ½ cups heavy whipping cream

½ tsp vanilla extract

¼ tsp cinnamon

3/4 cup peanut butter (all natural creamy PB with no sugar added)

1/3 cup monk fruit sweetener

Instructions for Ice Cream/Mousse:

1.    Add heavy whipping cream, vanilla extract, and peanut butter into mixing bowl and mix with a hand mixer or stand mixer until combined.

2.    Add cinnamon and monk fruit sweetener into mixture and mix until mixture has a whipped consistency (thick enough to not ooze off of cookie while setting in freezer). Be careful not to overwhip or the texture won’t be as smooth.

3. If mixture will not sit on the cookie without oozing, put mixture in freezer for 15-20 minutes and then put together the ice cream sandwich.

Instructions for Ice Cream Sandwich:

1.    Once your cookies have cooled completely, put approx.. 2 tbsp. of the ice cream/mousse mixture and spread it on the bottom of a cookie and then top with another cookie.

2.    Put sandwiches in a flat bottomed dish and put in freezer for 30 – 45 minutes and enjoy!

3.    If you store extra ice cream sandwiches in freezer, they will freeze solid and will need to be set out to thaw slightly before eating.

Keto Stromboli Recipe

Through this whole COVID-19 quarantine, I've been trying to avoid doing take out because I am at a higher risk for the virus and am just trying to minimize the things coming in to the house. That being the case, I have been perfecting several of our favorite Keto recipes over the last month and a half. Today I thought I would share the recipe we love for Keto stromboli.

Keto Stromboli

Ingredients:

- 1 3/4 cup Shredded Mozarella Cheese

- 3/4 cup Almond Flour

- 1 egg

- 1 tsp Italian Seasoning

- 1/2 tsp Parsley

- 1/2 tsp Garlic Powder

- 1/2 tsp Onion Powder

- 1/2 tsp Black Pepper

- Pepperoni (I like to use the large deli sized salami)

- Mushrooms

- Rao's Marinara Sauce (It also tastes great with the Rao's Garlic spaghetti sauce, you'll just have more carbs added)

- 1 cup Shredded Mozzarella Cheese 

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

2. Add the 1 3/4 cup shredded mozzarella cheese into a medium-sized microwave safe bowl and pop in to microwave for 30 seconds. After 30 seconds, stir and put back in for another 30 seconds. Repeat this until the cheese is completely melted and stirred smooth.

3. Once the cheese mixture is smooth, stir in the Italian Seasoning, Parsley, Garlic and Onion powder, and Black Pepper.

4. In a separate bowl, stir the almond flour and egg together. Once combined, add to the cheese and seasoning mixture and knead until the cheese mixture and almond flour and egg are combined (I either use another piece of parchment paper to do this or I grease my hands up with olive oil before kneading - make sure you don't knead without putting some sort of non-stick surface between your hands and the dough because it is a VERY sticky dough). Pour dough out onto parchment paper, and knead dough until all ingredients are completely combined.

5. While dough is on parchment paper, roll out dough into a large rectangle. 

6. spread a thin coating of Rao's marinara sauce on one half of the dough, then add layer of pepperoni, cheese, mushrooms, and then another layer of pepperoni on top of the marinara sauce.

7. Once toppings are added, use the parchment paper to roll the side of the dough with no toppings over the side with toppings and pull parchment paper back. Pinch dough around the edges until dough is completely closed.

8. Spray down a cookie sheet with non-stick spray and then gently move stromboli from parchment paper to cookie sheet.

9. Put stromboli in oven for 10 minutes (or until the bottom of the stromboli is completely browned) at 375 degrees. After 10 minutes, flip the stromboli and let cook for another 10 minutes (or until stromboli is completely browned). 

10. Warm up the extra marinara sauce for dipping and enjoy!

Keto Chicken Carbonara

This year, because it was just my husband and I, we decided to forego the usual ham for Easter dinner. Instead, I whipped up a Keto Chicken Carbonara, which I have been craving this meal for weeks. The recipe did not disappoint, so I thought I would share it. Enjoy!

Keto Chicken Carbonara

Ingredients:

4 Chicken breasts (6 oz chicken breasts)

1 ¼ cup Heavy whipping cream

¼ cup Mayonnaise

½ lb Thick sliced bacon

1 can Mushrooms (8 oz) 

½ tsp Xantham Gum (thickening agent)

1 cup Shredded parmesan cheese

1 Tbsp Minced garlic

½ tsp Onion Powder

Sea salt & Black pepper to taste

2-3 Tbsp Bacon Grease

12 oz Spiral Zucchini noodles (I like to use the frozen Green Giant family size zucchini veggie spirals)

Optional Ingredients: 

Peas (I don't usually add these because they are NOT Keto, but sometimes I add when I'm having a craving. I cook separately and then add in to individual servings so that I can make sure I'm controlling the portion size.) 

4 Eggs (I don’t like egg in my carbonara so I don’t add any, but you totally can if you like the egg.) 

Directions:

1.    Pre-heat oven to 375°. Lay bacon out on a baking sheet (I like to first put down tinfoil to save my baking sheets). When oven is heated, cook bacon for 10 minutes and then flip bacon over and cook for another 10 minutes or until bacon is crispy. Set aside 2-3 tablespoon bacon grease.

2.    Over medium heat, add 1-2 tablespoon bacon grease to large skillet. Season chicken breasts with salt and pepper and cook until temp reaches 165°F. Pull chicken out of pan and slice into strips.

3.    Add 1 tablespoon bacon grease to pan (if needed). Then add 1 tablespoon minced garlic and cook for 1 minute (or until fragrant), then add canned mushrooms and cook on medium heat until warmed through. Add sliced chicken back into pan and mix with mushrooms and garlic.

4.    Mix together 1 ¼ cup heavy whipping cream, 1/4 cup mayonnaise, 2/3 cup parmesan cheese, and Xanthan gum and then pour into pan. Reduce heat to low and let simmer for 5 minutes (Stir so mixture does not stick to pan). 

5.    Break up bacon into small pieces and add bacon to pan. 

6.    Put frozen zoodles into microwave and heat for 3 -4 minutes (until zoodles are no longer frozen, but are not fully cooked through). Drain zoodles of excess water and then add to pan and stir until all ingredients fully mixed. Let simmer 5 additional minutes or until zoodles are warmed through.

Note: If using fresh zucchini noodles, I would not cook the noodles at all before adding to mixture. I would add raw and let simmer in mixture until warmed through.

7.    Add remaining 1/3 cup of parmesan cheese over the top of the carbonara and serve. 

We got two meals out of this between the two of us.

Keto Pizza Recipe

For health reasons, I switched over to the Ketogenic diet about 9 months ago. One thing I really missed was pizza so I searched high and low for the perfect recipe that gave me the flavors and crunch that I was missing without the carbs. I couldn't find a recipe that I absolutely loved, so I tweaked a basic fathead dough recipe (you can find these all over the internet) and added in my favorite toppings and voila! Yumminess galore! I posted a picture on Instagram and a few people asked for the recipe so I thought I would share it here!

Ingredients:

Fathead Dough Recipe:

1 ½ cups shredded mozzarella cheese

2 tbsp cream cheese

1 egg

¾ cup almond flour (sifted)

1 tsp Italian seasoning

1 tsp garlic salt

½ tsp onion powder

½ tsp black pepper

Pizza Toppings:

1/4 cup Great Value Organic Tomato Sauce

1 ½ cups mozzarella cheese

1 ½ cups mushrooms

8 - 10 slices sandwich pepperoni (you will need more if you use regular pepperoni, which is smaller)

To Make Dough:

1.    Heat up mozzarella cheese and cream cheese in microwave 30 seconds at a time until fully melted and thoroughly mix together.

2.    Mix egg and almond flour together until fully combined.

3.    Combine cheese mixture, spices and almond flour mixture together. 

4.    Once mixture is combined, put on parchment paper and knead together until fully combined (You may need to put back in to microwave for another 30 seconds to get cheese a little softer if you find that dough is not fully combining).

5.    Put mixture into refrigerator for 30 minutes to chill (or freezer for 5 to 10 minutes).

To Make Pizza:

1.    Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

2.    Spread dough out on to pizza tray (I put olive oil on my hands and then spread out  the dough with my hands, I find that it is easier to get a evenly flattened, round shape this way).

3.    Cook dough for 5 minutes at 375 degrees to stiffen dough up for toppings.

4.    Pull dough out and flatten any bubbles that have risen in the dough.

5.    Increase oven temperature to 400 degrees

6.    Add toppings as desired.

7.    Cook pizza for 20 additional minutes – dough should have a nice golden bottom and crunchy edges.

Note: I have an electric stove and live in Florida that has higher humidity levels so you may have to adjust your oven temperature or bake times to get the same results.

With Love: A Birthday Card for Mom

Happy Groundhog Day, y'all! If you live above the Mason-Dixon Line, I hope that the groundhog doesn't see his shadow for all of your sakes. Down here in sunny Florida, we are looking at some beautiful weather in the 70's. ;) 

We are in the throes of home renovations right now, working hard so that we can get into our new house by the end of February! The guys are two floor boards away from having the flooring finished in the house and next is to get the trim up and finished off. I am deep into getting the kitchen cabinets scrubbed down so I can start the painting process and picking up pieces here and there for the extra spaces that we will have in the house that we do not currently have in our apartment. 

With all of that work going on, I haven't had much time to craft but I thought I would pop on and share the card that I whipped up for my mom's birthday in early-January. I used a Papertrey Ink stamp and die set, as well as some Jen Hadfield papers that my dear cousin, Christy from Christy Gets Crafty sent me for Christmas! I also used die sets from Waffle Flower and Paper Smooches to finish off the sentiment and the inside of the card!

Mass Producing Christmas Cards

Today I am back with the next installment of my Christmas card series, Mass Producing Christmas Cards. Sorry for the delay, but I had a good reason. We closed on our house today! Yipee! We will not actually be moving in until January because we have to do some work on it first, but it is all ours now! Hubby and I are super excited!!!

But back to Christmas cards...

I don't know about you, but I make a TON of Christmas cards each year (like almost 300). A little less than 200 typically go to a charity and then the rest get sent out to friends and family. With all of those cards to make, I just do not have the time to make each and every one of those cards unique. To make the process a bit more simple for myself and a bit more practical to fit into my time constraints, I usually assembly line as much of the process as I am able to. While I try not to make more than 5 or 6 of the cards identical, there are certain things that can be done up front and all at once. Below are some of my tips and tricks to making large batches of cards as quickly (and painlessly) as possible! (Warning - this post is a bit text heavy, but I wanted to share my process as completely as possible so it would be easy to repeat!)

Tips and Tricks

1. The first thing I do when I sit down and have all of my supplies stacked beside me is to score and cut down my card bases. I usually score half of my 8 1/2 x 11 inch card stock down the middle with the paper laid vertically on my paper trimmer at 4 1/4 inches and then flip the cardstock so that it is laying horizontally and cut it down the middle at 5 1/2 inches. the other half of the cardstock I score at 5 1/2 inches with the paper laying horizontally and cut at 4 1/4 inches with the cardstock laying vertically on the paper trimmer. I usually do these 50 sheets at a time, which make 100 card bases, so that when you go to sit down and make cards you can just grab a pre-cut and folded card base to decorate. I would do them all at once, but I simply don't have the space on my desk. After I get through the first batch of card bases, I repeat the process all over again.  

2. After I am done cutting down the card bases, I go through my Christmas themed paper and pick out those I want to use for card backgrounds and trim them using a paper trimmer (at 4 1/4 x 5 1/2 for A2 sized cards) or, using a border die, cut them down using my Cuttlebug. When I use dies, I use the largest die that will fit onto the front of an A2 sized card. I cut down the same number of card backgrounds as card bases so that I can whip the cards together by batches without having to stop and find more papers to cut down. You can always trim down additional paper for the individual elements as you go, but you know that you are going to need at least as many pieces of patterned paper for card backgrounds as you have card bases. 

3. Don't just pull paper from your Christmas paper stash for your cards, look through your existing paper stash (6x6 and 12x12 papers) to see what you can use. You'll be amazed at how much paper you have that will work for your Christmas cards.

4a. Go back through your Christmas paper and pull out all of the papers that have cut apart elements - anything with Christmas sentiments or images that you can cut down to be the focal point of a card. Cut down each of these elements so that when you start making your cards, you have a nice supply of already completed elements that you simply need to attach to your card fronts with adhesive.

4b. Go through any Christmas-related embellishment packs to see if there are any that would make a good focal image or sentiment on a Christmas card.

5a. Get out all of your Christmas stamps and inks (I usually stick to black and brown nicks to make this step a bit faster than bouncing back and forth between a bunch of different ink colors) and stamp all of your Christmas images and sentiments out at one time. This way you have a bunch of images that you can color while doing something like watching tv.

5b. Color your images in all in one step (not necessarily one time, but before moving on to fussy cutting/die cutting out your images and/or sentiments and putting your cards together).

5c. Fussy cut/die cut all of your images and/or sentiments down in one step. This way you do not have to keep pulling out your paper trimmer and/or die cutting machine and dies over and over again while you are trying to make your cards. 

6. Give yourself a stack of die cut panels, whether circles, rectangles, ovals, or other shapes, to add interest to your cards. By cutting a bunch at once, you have a nice variety to choose from without having to stop in the middle of making a card and go through all of your paper pads to find a specific piece of paper that you then have to put through your die cut machine before getting back to your card.

7. After each step is complete, I typically take all of the pre-cut or pre-made elements and put them each into plastic baggies - I usually use the quart sized ones and put all of the card bases in one or two baggies, all of the bases in another baggies, etc. This keeps all of the elements separated and safely stored away when I am not crafting and makes all of the elements easy to find and go through when I am ready to sit down and work on the cards.

8. It's time to put your cards together! With all of the hard work already complete, you should be able to make your cards in record time!

Using your PC to Simplify Christmas Card Making

Hello all, today I am hopping on to share the next installment of my Christmas Card Making Like a Scrapbooker, How to Use Your PC to Simplify Christmas Card Making. I don't know about you, but I only have a limited amount of sentiments for Christmas time and after a while, I get tired of using the same ones over and over again or I want a bigger sentiment to be the focal point of the front of the card. When that happens, I like to either use a Bible verse  or use a font I have found online with Christmas images instead of letters. I just type it on to the page and then make the image bigger until it is the size I want it (I have a number of Christmas fonts saved on my Pinterest board, Fonts). I've saved a number of font to my computer because I really like having all of the different options for sentiments or images. Downloading a font is pretty easy (at least it is on a mac) but if anyone has any questions I can do a tutorial on downloading fonts to a mac.

Below are a couple of cards that I made using downloaded fonts, which I used for personal  uses only and an image of the three wise men that was also pulled from an online font.

Card 1: The Three Wise Men
When using an image from a font, you are typically going to have to re-size it to at least a font size of 175 to have it big enough to cover a card. I like to print my sentiments on kraft cardstock, as well as cream cardstock, and white card stock. I think that the black ink pops beautifully against those colors. I like the classic, elegant look of the black myself, but you can always choose other colors of ink to use. 

Card 2: Unto Us a Child is Born

For this card, I looked up one of my favorite Christmas-related verses in Isaiah 9:6, "For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counseller, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace." I tried a bunch of different fonts before settled on the one in the cards below and then I just did a quick search online for a nice, simple star image that I could add over the bible verse. For these cards, I was in a bit of a rush to finish so I simply cut them down to fit the card with my paper trimmer. These three cards were super easy and came together really quickly. I think I made all three in under 10 minutes.

Tips and Tricks: 

When I download a new font made up of images I immediately pull Word up and type out the entire alphabet in the new font, print out the sheet with the new fonts and then write the letter of the alphabet the image corresponds to so that when I go to use one of the images I can just pull the sheet up and know which font and which letter to use rather than having to always type through the alphabet trying to remember which letter I was supposed to be using.