Other Bloggers and Me

Me!

As you may have noticed I've started blogging again! I am officially done with studying, so everything that has been taking a back seat for the last few months is reclaiming it's time in my life. However summer is here and having the time to cook and develop new recipes is definitely an added bonus. 

Hopefully I won't be stopping again, at least not for that huge amount of time anyway! As always, any requests or questions field them my way and I'll see what I can do.

I am still horrendously far from my goal weight, but plodding a long and at the moment focused on sticking to keto for a full 3 months with no cheating. Which might be easier said that done considering I'm moving and have a holiday slap bang in the middle of those 3 months.


Blog News!

In other news, this blog now has a twitter account: https://twitter.com/ketotheukway
so follow me on that, and ensure that you won't miss a single update or any of my random thoughts throughout the day.

Other Bloggers 

If you are looking for more inspiration in your cooking then below are a handy list of blogs I frequent, and know their recipes are fantastic. They are all American/Canadian bloggers so your mileage may vary if you aren't all that comfortable with cup conversions:


All Day I Dream About Food and all day I dream about her food. Her dessert recipes are second to none, and one day I dream of having a cupboard full of ingredients like hers so that I can create everything she does.

Keto Incognito Alison who runs this blog, I swear this girl has a gift for creating recipes that are quick, simple and taste amazing. If you don't believe me, try the Alison Bread (TM) recipe and think again.

Low Carb Linda a staple in the low carb community. More often than not if I'm looking for something to make with a few ingredients, I turn to her website and it get's the sparks flying in my head to create my own recipe.

Online Communities

Sometimes you just need a little support, and in a world where low carb living is tricky online is the natural place to go. If you want more inspiration, help or just a kick up the arse then head to one of the below and they will help.

Reddit Keto The group that started it all for me, and I still frequent on a semi regular basis. If they don't know it, it's generally not worth knowing.

Reddit Keto for Women Where I spend most of my keto online time if I'm honest. Keto works wonders for men and women but women have a harder time losing weight in general (damn you hormones!) and this subreddit is focused on those. I find the daily rants and raves massively helpful.

Reddit Keto Diet on Facebook Initially set up for those of us on Reddit who actually used facebook more during the day, this has become a great place for newbies to bounce ideas of each other.

Cookie Dough!

I was really surprised that I liked this recipe, and also how simple it was to make. Normally things with coconut flour as the base need a couple of types of liquid to work properly purely because of the amount of liquid it is capable to absorb. Naturally this means that the chances of ending up with a product that is too dry to eat is quite high. But not this time! I love having these on hand for a small dessert or snack in the middle of the evening, it stemmed from a recipe that was kicking around on the forums for a raw cookie dough recipe similar to those you can buy in a tube in America. As yet I haven't tried to bake them, but maybe that is the next stage.

Give them a try and let me know what you think!

 Ingredients (makes 50 circles the size of a £2 coin about 1cm thick)

110g Coconut flour

120g Unsalted butter 

240ml Double Cream

2 tsp vanilla extract (or to taste)

20g 90% Lindt dark chocolate chopped into small pieces

2 tbsp liquid sweetener or equivalent of granulated

You will also need: 5 pieces of baking paper, a spoon for mixing and a bowl.

1. Melt the 120g of butter in a mixing bowl.
2. Add the coconut flour, cream, chocolate. I used my cooking scissors to chop up the chocolate, although it does melt quite quickly when you hold it!
3. Also add the vanilla extract and liquid sweetener, when I make this I normally add half at this stage and half after the mixing so that I can get the taste right.
4. Mix all the ingredients together thoroughly until all the liquid has been absorbed, all the chocolate chips are evenly distributed and it looks like normal dough. 
5. Taste a small bit of the dough and adjust the sweetener and the vanilla extract if you need to.
6. Flatten out the pieces of baking paper.
7. Evenly split the mixture between the 5 pieces of baking paper. I do this by weighing the bowl before I start, weighing the mixture and the bowl after mixing then subtracting the weight of the bowl. So here- I had a 100g bowl, 600g mixture and bowl, so 500g of mixture which was very handy maths!
8. Roll the individual portions of mixture between the paper until it forms a smooth sausage shape. You should end up with 5 about the same thickness and length. If you make it too thin a sausage initially just fold the mixture in half and re-roll it.
9. When all 5 are done, take a sharp knife and slice each roll into 10 equal portions.
10. Carefully, so as not to squidge the roll together again, wrap the rolls up in the baking paper and fold the ends over.
11. Put the wrapped rolls into the freezer and eat them as you desire!

I tend to break them up into individual circles after they have frozen solid, and put them in a sandwich bag. They store a lot easier this way and freezer burn is avoided! Take out a couple about 5 minutes before you want to eat them to allow them to defrost slightly.

Nutritional Information (Per circle)

Calories  50 kcal

Protein   0.5g
Fat     4.8g
Carbohydrate 0.6g
Fibre 0.8g

Review:Perfect World ice cream

The keto gods have been listening, and yesterday sitting in a freezer cabinet in Holland and Barrett I found this. Keto friendly ice cream, in the UK, that tastes AMAZING, doesn't kick me out of ketosis because they use erythritol and stevia, and is only £5.49. Which considering Ben and Jerry's is £4.70 is not a bad price at all.

The company Perfect World  are fairly new as far as I can tell, and as yet you can only get the strawberry and chocolate flavours from larger Holland and Barrett Branches. Although I've asked at my local one and they are willing to order it in for me. On their website they have two rather delicious Banana Walnut Chip and a Taste of carrot cake which I will be finding out how to get my hands on shortly. 

I've tried some diabetic ice creams, and the previous "keto ice cream" Whey-Hey that I have found in Holland and Barrett and they have all been a bit lacking. Whey-hey in fact left a horrible taste in my mouth, not only because of the £3 for a single pot size they were charging. In contrast this was everything I wanted it to be. Light, creamy, tasty, no cooling effect from the sweetener and no adverse effects either!

I've attempted to make keto ice cream before, and they have all been a bit icy and a nightmare to serve unless I freeze it in individual portions. In contrast this serves up really well, has real chunks of strawberry and after some deliberation between the newly keto boy and I decided it tasted a lot like someone had made frubes into ice cream. Which is not bad thing! I definitely will be trying the chocolate one as soon as this pot is finished.

A suggested serving is 100ml ,which is pictured and is hugely generous and minus the sweeteners has only 3g carbs a serving and actually I was happy with about half that so a pot would last longer which is no bad thing.

Nutritional Information From their Website are below:

Serving size 100ml.
Typical Values	100ml	Per 100g
ENERGY - KJ - KCAL (CALORIES)	482kJ 115kcal	666kJ 161kcal
FAT saturatesmono-unsaturatespolyunsaturates	6.9g 2.5g 3g 1.2g	10g 3.4g 4.1g 1.6g
CARBOHYDRATEavailable carbohydratesugarspolyols	14g 3g 2.2g 11g	19g 4.2g 3g 15g
FIBRE	2.2g	3.1g
PROTEIN	2.6g	3.6g
SALT	53mg	73mg