Saturday, March 26, 2011

Great Week! And a GREAT Sandwich Roll Recipe! #lowcarb

I haven't eaten anything out of the ordinary this week but it all tasted so good! Probably my favorite meal was tilapia that I fried in butter on the griddle, and served with whole green beans that I'd sauteed in a frying pan with butter and olive oil, seasoned with onion powder and sea salt, plus some cubed roasted butternut squash. Was pretty too, all those colors on the plate...and cheap! Under $10 for the 3 of us.

I've been eying yet another lowcarb "bread" recipe for a while now but never made it. I cook by gut instinct, and don't follow recipes, but knew I could do something with this one. And a couple of days ago I found a lovely muffin top pan in excellent condition at our local thrift store for 50c (I'd been wanting one for several years but couldn't justify the expense) and was looking for an opportunity to use it, so I thought I would go for it with my revised (is it revised if you change almost everything in the recipe, one way or another?) version of the above-referenced recipe.

I made these earlier this evening, and just had a fried egg, ham, and cheese sandwich on 2 of them, and I am HOOKED! They don't fall apart, they aren't sticky, and most of all they are deliciously great! I will tell you how I made them, and if you want to further revise, please feel free, and let me know about it ok?

8 oz. soft cream cheese (full fat)
3 eggs
4 drops (equal to 4 tsp sugar) liquid sucralose
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp xanthan gum
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2c low carb baking mix*
1/2c wheat protein isolate**
1/2c full fat plain yogurt

I mixed the cream cheese in the mixer until it was smooth, then added the eggs one at a time and let them blend in, scraping the bowl as needed. Added the liquid sucralose with the last egg. Stopped the mixer when it had become very smooth, and added the remaining ingredients in no particular order, then mixed on low speed until blended, and on medium speed until smooth and almost glossy.

Put a glob of batter into each WELL-GREASED well of the muffin top pan, and spread it from the middle to the sides; it filled the wells only halfway. (I did try a few more full but they made a heavier sandwich roll than I care for.) Baked them in a 325 oven for 10 minutes on the middle rack. (The fuller ones I tried took 13 minutes.) They puffed up to the top of the wells. Let them cool slightly - until they pulled away from the sides and unpuffed - before removing them to a cooling rack.

I got 14 out of the batch, but had made 4 heavier ones, so I probably could have gotten 16. And I will tell you that, as much as I have bragged about the lovely bread in the breadmaker, I like this much better for a sandwich! Not sure how they'd toast, I'll probably use the lovely bread for that, but I will go back to eating sandwiches now that I have these. They are DELICIOUS!!! (NOTE: I had my sandwich on 2 thin ones and I feel like I ate 3 sandwiches - very filling, you have been warned :).)

Oh yeah, about those asterisks...
* I have Bob's Red Mill, don't much care for it but I'm trying to use it up.
** I happen to have the 5000 on hand. Don't know if/how the 8000 would work.

About 2gN per, or thereabouts. (I always tell people to do their own math, there are variables in brands for example, so don't trust anybody else's math especially if your carb count needs to be exact.)

You gotta try these!

Sunday, March 20, 2011

What I 8 Today - 3/20/11

Didn't eat before church so by the time I got home I was starving. Had some tuna salad, using Dreamfield's macaroni. No recipe really, just tuna and macaroni, hard-boiled egg, mayo, a squirt of mustard, some chopped green onions, and seasonings to my own taste - and a deviled egg. Several hours later at my daughter's new apartment I had a lovely salad, some roasted chicken, lots of asparagus with butter, and a small baked potato (scooped out most of the middle, the skin is the best part anyway!) loaded with butter. Wonderful afternoon there!

After I got home and took a nap, I ate a couple of deviled eggs, and made some chocolate bark. Again, no real recipe...melted down a couple of 85% cacao bars with some coconut oil and butter, roasted and chopped some raw almonds and some coconut chips and added them in, plus a mixture of xylitol and liquid sucralose, a dash of cinnamon, a touch of salt, and some oat bran (because I love oatmeal in my bark). It is cooling now.

I'm still hungry so I will probably eat something else, not sure what yet, but if I don't I will eat too much bark tonight! Right now I'm thinking a slice of buttered toast and a couple of fried eggs on top...guess I'd better go eat it before I get so hungry I eat too much!