Flourless, sugar free chocolate mug-cake

First of all, I'm sorry that my presence on this blog is rather erratic. Weekly Wednesday updates - yeah right!!! Also, my apologies that I'm so slow to follow up on all your comments. I had this optimistic idea that since my job now involves less travelling, I'd have all this spare time and energy to spend on blogging. Only that my job still turned into a 6-days and 50-hour  a week scenario. And in my spare time, I've been fighting a never-ending respiratory infection (probably due to all the stress). Therefore, my Friday night snack yesterday was immune-boosting frozen blueberries.... with just a tiny bit of flourless chocolate cake on the side ;-) 

The recipe came from a blog that a friend of mine linked to on Facebook. She had made it more primal by changing a recipe that she found. I again made it LCHF and more blood-sugar-friendly by swapping honey for erythritol. 

Ingredients

1 Tbsp butter

1 egg

1/4 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp vanilla powder

1 1/2 Tbsp cocoa

1 Tbsp thickened cream

3 Tbsp erythritol 

Procedure

• Melt butter in a mug in the microwave. 
• Add the egg and beat with a fork. 
• Throw in rest of ingredients and stir. 
• Nuke for around 1.5 minute in your microwave oven and - voila -  a chocolate-miracle!  
• Serve with whipped cream and blueberries 

You may want to experiment with the cooking-time depending on your oven-type. Perhaps 1.5 minute will make it rubbery, then try a few less seconds next time. 

I know it doesn't look too delicious from the photo - but trust me, it is!

Omelette with feta, basil and sun-dried tomatoes

Oooops, I completely forgot to blog something last week. Suddenly, I'm super-busy again and time is just flying... I hope you will forgive me! But when life was more relaxed a few weeks ago, I used the opportunity to enjoy looooong, gourmet breakfasts on my front-veranda.I discovered that it doesn't take much to "pimp" that boring old omelette to something that could be served in the trendiest breakfast-place in Brisbane. So, I thought I'd share a breakfast recipe for a change. This is a slightly modified version of a recipe I found in the book  "Lavkarbo husmannskost" by Anna Hallen.

Ingredients
3 eggs
50 ml cream
10 sun-dried tomatoes
10 cherry tomatoes
1 tbsp butter
7 feta-cheese pieces
10 basil leaves 
A few "twists" with your salt-and-pepper grinders


Procedure

• Combine eggs, cream, salt and pepper and whip lightly using a fork. 
•  Melt the butter in a frying pan, and pour over the egg-mixture. Let egg-mixture settle into an omelette (like normally).
• Cut the sun-dried tomatoes, cherry-tomatoes and feta-cheese cubes in halves. 
• When the omelette is nearly cooked, sprinkle the sun-dried tomatoes, cherry-tomatoes and the cheese on top, along with the basil leaves. 
• Leave to simmer for a couple of minutes under a lid. 
• Serve!

Rich low-carb chocolate cake

Father's Day is coming up on Sunday, so why not treat  Dad to some delicious chocolate cake? Best of all, it's healthy, and, if you don't tell him it's low-carb, he will never know. Once again, I've found the recipe in the fabulous baking book "Fristende Lavkarbo"

Ingredients
200 g 70% chocolate
200 g butter
50 ml strong coffee
100 ml erythritol (or another sweetener)
1 teaspoon vanilla powder
3 eggs
200 ml ground almonds

Procedure
Break the chocolate into pieces and melt in a pan together with butter and coffee. Remove from the heat and whisk in sweetener and vanilla. Let the chocolate mass cool down.

Meanwhile, whisk the eggs lightly in a different bowl. Then, add the eggs and ground almonds to the chocolate mixture and stir. Then, pour the batter into a  22 cm spring form that you have coated with butter/oil.

Bake on 180 degrees C in the middle of the oven for 20 minutes, and voila, you will make your Dad/father in the family very happy!

Serve for example with cream, berries, low-carb ice cream or some sugar-free jam, like I did here. 

Zucchini (squash) carbonara

It's Wednesday again, and time to share a new recipe. This time I'll share another quick dinner suggestion for all you fellow  time-poor people out there:

Ingredients
2 large zucchinis
2 large chicken fillets
250 g bacon
1 tbsp butter
2 cloves of garlic
100 ml cream
3 egg yolks
5 tbsp grated parmesan cheese
Salt and pepper

Procedure
Grate the zucchini using a julienne peeler. Fry diced chicken fillets and bacon. Whisk the egg yolks and the cream in a bowl. Fry the zucchini with the butter and the garlic in a medium-sized pot. Add the egg mixture to the zucchini and stir well. Then add parmesan and the spice. Lastly, add the meat and stir well.  That's it! Dinner in less than thirty minutes!

Note to self: Next time I'll use three zucchinis instead of two, if I use small ones like this time, as I would have liked to have a bit more green in this dish. 

Inspiration came from the beautiful blog www.sprudlendesunn.no/blogg/

Low carb scones for breakfast

This morning I was enjoying a slow start, and I decided to treat myself to home made low carb scones for brekkie. The recipe came from one of my Norway-treasures: The cookbook "Frisk med lavkarbo - 100 oppskrifter" by Norwegian  doctor Sofie Hexeberg and Gunn-Karin Sakariassen , currently not available in English (that I know of). 

Ingredients

80 g butter

120 g cheese

4 large eggs

120 g almonds

120 g walnuts

1 teaspoon baking powder

Olive oil 

Procedure

Coat a muffin tray  or large muffin cups with olive oil. 

Melt the butter, grate the cheese and whip the eggs lightly. 

Grind almonds and walnuts in a food processor. 

Add butter, cheese, almonds, nuts and baking powder to the whipped eggs and mix. Add a bit of water, should the batter feel too dry. (I didn't need to). Spread the mixture in a tray or muffin cups. I used a tray as shown in the photo below, and got 12 scones. 

Bake on 180 degrees C for 15 minutes. Then let the scones cool down before removing from the tray or the muffin cups. 

According to the authors, the scones are well suited for freezing. They may be kept in the fridge for 2-3 days, but apparently taste best when freshly baked or when heated up after being frozen. I can foresee this recipe going on repeat in my kitchen: SO yummy, and the scones will work for both breakfast, lunches or as a snack on-the-go. Next time I'll double the recipe and freeze most of it. 

I had mine with a bit of sugar free jam this morning, but they are probably even better with butter and cheese. 

The authors suggest adding bits of bacon, cooked ham or some spice to the batter for a bit of variation, and I might try that next time. 

New update each Wednesday!

I've got a little more time on my hands now that my job doesn't involve so much travel! This coincides with me returning from Norway, loaded with low carb cookbooks and inspiration for many many recipes to try out. Some of my readers have requested more frequent updates, and I'll make your wish come true: I've decided to try for weekly updates of this blog from now on, and Wednesday will be the day! That way, if I make something tempting (a cake, a low carb treat etc.), you'll have time to shop for the ingredients and try it out on the weekend! So, from now on, make sure to stop by my blog (at least!) each Wednesday. 

LCHF raspberry ice cream cake

It was summer in the northern hemisphere when I visited, and summer is a perfect excuse for ice cream! Therefore I decided to bake this raspberry ice cream temptation one day. Despite my stack of new low carb cookbook, this one comes from my much-used "Fristende lavkarbo" (translation: Tempting low carb) by blogger Cecilie, who used to write a blog with the same name. 

Ingredients

Crust:

200 g hazelnuts

1 teaspoon psyllium husk fibre

1 teaspoon baking powder

3 egg whites

100 ml erythritol (the finely ground type)

50 g melted butter

Ice cream 

3 egg yolks

3 tablespoons (15 ml-kind) erythritol

300 ml cream

200 g raspberries

Procedure

Crust

Grind hazelnuts to a flour of medium-sized grains. Add psyllium husk and baking powder to the nut flour and mix well. Beat egg whites until stiff, then add the sweetener to the egg whites while whipping. Carefully fold in the hazelnut flour to the egg mixture. Now add melted butter that has cooled down a bit. 

Spread the mass onto a  a 22 cm spring form covered in baking paper. Bake for 20 minutes on 175 degrees C. Make the ice cream while the crust is cooling down. 

Ice cream

Whip egg yolks and the sweetener until fluffy and airy. Beat the cream in a separate bowl, then fold the beaten egg and sweetener into the cream. Finally add the raspberries and stir. 

Combining the cake

Spread the raspberry cream on top of the crust. Cover the cake with Glad wrap to avoid crystallization and put the cake in the freezer. Now it's time to be patient, and in half a day or so it's time to enjoy this divine treat. The cake is easier to cut if you take it out of the fridge around half an hour before you intend to serve it. Decorate with strawberries or other berries on top. 

Low carb Inspiration

I've just got back to Australia after a (much needed!) month of holidays in Norway. Apart from spending lots of time with my family and friends, I also did some shopping. Low carb eating, especially LCHF, is very popular in Scandinavia, and the result is that heaps of low carb cookbooks have been published over the last couple of years. I couldn't resist the temptation, and ended up with no less than 7 new cookbooks in my baggage! Needless to say, our suitcases were stuffed when we returned. I've felt like a child on Christmas Day browsing through all my new treasures. Now I can't wait to try out some of the recipes and share them on the blog. 

Rich and creamy cauliflower soup

Winter is definitely here in the Southern Hemisphere. Some mornings it has got down to + 2 degrees, which is a lot colder than it sounds (in case there are any fellow Scandinavians reading this). Believe it or not, I'm actually feeling the cold a lot more than when I lived ten hours north of the Arctic Circle. The reason being that Norwegian houses are warm little humidity cribs, and Queensland houses are built to keep the heat out rather than the other way around... Which is why I've gone into hibernation-mode and like spending the cold nights under a blanket with a massive cup of tea or a big bowl of home-made soup to help me defrost.Today I made this totally divine cauliflower soup, which is a perfect dinner on a winter's night. LCHF of course, without any of the nasties the store-bought soups are full of. It's also quite quick and easy to make. Cole's has cauliflower on special this week, for only 1 dollar each, therefore this recipe is a great option if you are trying to live frugally. Who said living la vida low carb has to be expensive!

Ingredients
1 massive cauliflower (mine was more than 1.2 kg!)
1 chicken stock cube
300 ml cream
250 g bacon
nutmeg
salt 
pepper

Procedure
Separate/cut the cauliflower into bouquets and bring to boil with around 800 ml of water (this is a rough estimate, as I used a pot with a large surface area and therefore needed quite a bit of water to cover the cauliflower). Let boil for roughly a minute, then remove 200-300 gram of the cauliflower from the pot and let place it in a bowl of cold water. These cauliflower bouquets will be added in to the soup later. They are supposed to swim around in the soup whole and are only lightly boiled to retain a bit of crunch. 

Add the chicken stock to the remaining cauliflower bouquets in the pot and let it boil for twenty minutes. 
Fry the bacon while the cauliflower is boiling. 
When the cauliflower is soft, puree it using a hand-blender. Some of the water will now have evaporated, but there's still a fair bit of water left in the pot. Keep it, and add the cream. Now bring to boil again and add  spice after taste.  Let simmer for a couple of minutes, then add the cauliflower previously set aside. Now either add all the bacon into the soup, or just sprinkle it on top of the soup - or you can do a bit of both. 

Enjoy! 

This adds up to about four servings

I like my bacon well done, but the pieces were not really as charcoaled as they look here

The inspiration for this recipe came from the beautiful blogger Caroline. I changed the quantities somewhat from her recipe (http://fotballfrue.no/2013/05/01/oppskrift-onsdag-blomkalsuppe/), as I suspect that Norwegian cauliflowers are a bit smaller than the monster veggies here in Australia.  

Salmon lasagne

Growing up in the arctic part of Norway, I was blessed having endless access to the most gourmet fish, freshly caught from the local ocean, lake or river by my Dad. Fish was cheap, easily available and typically a fish-dish found its way to our dinner table three times per week. Since moving to Australia, I must admit that my fish-consumption has gone down the drain. One reason is that fish doesn't quite taste the same as when it's caught and prepared by my Dad. Even salmon, which I used to love, doesn't smell "quite right" and has a strange after-taste when bought in my local, suburban-Brisbane Woollies. Therefore I am so happy to have found this recipe! Thank you thank you thank you to the lovely Linn from "Sprudlende sunn blogg"who posted it on her blog some weeks ago. The secret with this recipe is that it camouflages the salmon-odor between layers of delicious spinach-sauce, bechamel-sauce and garlic. What I'm talking about is salmon lasagne. Preparing this dish once per week will make sure I up my fish-intake considerable. Well, enough blabbing, here it goes:

Fish-base

500 g  salmon fillets 

Bake the salmon fillets with some salt and pepper on 200 degrees C for around 15 minutes. Continue with the other steps while the salmon is in the oven.

Spinach-sauce:

(It's not really a sauce, but I lack a better word)

500 g frozen spinach

3 tablespoons butter

1 finely chopped red onion 

2 stems of chopped spring onion 

A pinch of salt

Mix ingredients in a pot and let simmer for a few minutes 

Lasagna-plates 

I used the recipe from my lasagne-post:http://aussie-lowcarb-living.blogspot.com.au/2012/03/lasagne.html 

Bechamel-sauce

2 heaped tablespoons butter

3 tablespoons flour 

500 ml full cream milk 

120 g shredded cheese 

2 gloves of garlic 

Salt and pepper

Melt the butter in a pot, stir in flour and add the milk little by little. When thickened, add the garlic and the cheese. 

Now is the time to admit I did something very very naughty: I used white flour....(the shock! The horror!) But I reckoned it was a  very small amount, and when I calculated the nutritional values (see below) it wasn't too bad. However,  I'd be happy to receive some tips on what can be used in stead to get that silky, bechamel-feeling.  

Combining the layers: 

Mash the baked salmon with a fork. Place about half of the salmon in a buttered oven-safe dish. 

Place a layer of the spinach-sauce on top of the fish. 

On top of that, spread about  half of the lasagne-plates. 

Cover with a layer of  the bechamel-sauce. 

Add another layer: Salmon, then spinach, then bechamel sauce and lasagne-plates.

Cover with more shredded cheese (I ended up using 90 grams). Put it into the oven and bake on 200 degrees C for around 15 minutes. Let the lasagne rest for 5 minutes before you enjoy this little piece of heaven. 

The recipe is a little bit cumbersome, but so worth spending some extra time on, as it gave the two of us dinner for 3 days (a total of six servings)The approximate nutritional values per serving is as following: 

• kcal: 430
• Carbs: 7 g
• Protein: 31 g
• Fat: 31 g

(Not bad, considering that some of the evil, white stuff found it's way into the dish)

I have amended the recipe slightly from Linn's original. 

Note to myself: Next time I make it, I'll try with a bit more fish, perhaps around 750 grams. 

Super-quick chicken casserole

I can't believe it's been nearly three months since the last time I posted a recipe on the blog. One reason is that I've transitioned from the (relatively) laidback student-life to working 8.30-5 with an additional two hours of commuting each day... I'm not the most creative in the kitchen at the best of times, and when I get home at six-ish now, the last thing I want to do is slave away over the pans for another hour. The man in the house is an okay cook, but his  repertoire of things low carb is fairly limited, so his recipes tend to run on repeat. Also, he has the same crazy schedule as myself, so to have him cook each and every day isn't fair to him either. Therefore, there has been a few too many take-away dinners lately, and I have been resorting to junk-food such as the low-carb pizza from Domino's, which actually isn't very low-carb at all... Can anyone guess in which direction my weight has started to move?

 Out of desperation I googled something like "super easy low-carb dinners" (but in Norwegian), hoping to get some tips on what on earth I could cook that is both LCHF and doesn't require me to spend an eternity in the kitchen on those nights I have a flat battery. The saying goes "When the student is ready the teacher will appear", and that's exactly what happened! I stumbled across the brilliant blog http://www.lavkarbogjortenkelt.net/, which is packed with exactly the kind of quick, no-fuss LCHF recipes I was looking for. A couple of hours of intense studying later I blissfully emerged, armed with twenty or so dinner-ideas which will make my life so much easier in the weeks and months to come. Thanks to the blog mentioned, I've regained the inspiration that I needed to go on eating LCHF in these busy times. Being time-poor is something I believe most Aussies can relate to, and following a way of eating that requires you to cook most things from scratch can further add to the stress. Therefore I will share these quick dinner ideas as I go along, experimenting with new recipes.

This dinner I'm going to share now was an instant success. It also took less than 20 minutes to make.  It's so easy that I can't believe I haven't thought about it before:

Ingredients
1 barbecued chicken (I got mine at Woolies)
1 red capsicum
Almost one whole leek 
1 cup pouring cream
Spices

Procedure
Chop capsicum and leek and lightly fry  in some butter in a wok. Cut the chicken into cubes and throw them in  with the vegetables. Add a splash of cream and some spice and let simmer until the cream has thickened a bit. Voila!  

This fed me and my better half and left one of us with lunch for tomorrow. Next time I will double the recipe as I love the feeling of coming home, realising that dinner will sort itself out after a couple of minutes in the microwave oven. 

Here are some photos. Unfortunately a bit blurry, as they are taken with my mobile. 

The spice you can see in the photo is about half a container (10 grams) of the "Masterfood Perfect for chicken herb and spice mix". with paprika, onion and garlic. It's full of sugar and surely other nasty stuff, but an easy option when you are unsure of exactly what spices will go nicely together. Any suggestions to what spices I can try next time instead of this? 

Australia Day cake

I found this recipe on www.ingridsblogg.no a while ago, and I have been drooling over it ever since. When celebrating Christmas with my partner's family, I was in charge of desserts. So I thought I'd seize the opportunity and finally make this cake. And it really lived up to my expectations! I thought I'd share it with the heading "Australia Day cake", since this holiday is coming up soon, and you may be looking for a low carb treat. It's super easy to make, calls for no mysterious ingredients, and it's been approved by my low-carb-sceptic extended family! 


Ingredients:
100 g almonds
75 g butter
150 ml erythritol
300 ml cream
300 g Philadelphia cream cheese

1 teaspoon vanilla powder
3 teaspoons cocoa
100 g 70% chocolate


Method:
Melt butter and grind the almonds. Mix almonds, 3/4 of the melted butter and 50 ml erythritol. This is the crust of the cake. Spread the mixture into a spring-form and place in the refrigerator to set. 

Then, whip the cream together with 50 ml erythritol. In another bowl, whip the cream cheese and the last 50 ml of erythritol. Combine the two mixtures and stir. 

Divide the batter into two bowls. In one bowl, add in the cocoa, while in another you add in the vanilla powder. (Now you've got one bowl of chocolate-cream and another with vanilla-cream)

Spread the chocolate-cream on top of the almond-base. Add the vanilla-cream layer on top of that. Put the cake back in the fridge while you prepare a final layer of melted chocolate:

Melt the chocolate together with the remainder of the butter. Let the chocolate cool a little, then spread it on top of the cake. Let stand to cool for a couple of hours before serving. 

Enjoy!

Here are some photos. Unfortunately, some of them turned out a bit blurry

Loving earth vanilla powder

Happy New Year, everyone!

I'd like to start the new year with  a recommendation for a brilliant product!
You may have noticed that several of my recipes call for something called vanilla powder. It is exactly what it sounds like: Pure, ground vanilla. Until now I have been unable to find it anywhere in Australia. I have probably asked about it in ten health food stores, and they have just looked at me weirdly. Iherb doesn't stock it either. I found it on a UK website called gojiking, but somehow I never got around to order it. I had just resigned myself to always having to bake with that icky, sugary-laden vanilla-paste from my local Woollies. I once found a vanilla essence that was just vanilla and alcohol (no sugar), but I wasn't too impressed. Of course, I could just use vanilla-pods, but firstly I'm too lazy to scrape out the seeds, and secondly, they cost a fortune in Australia. But, one morning I saw this Aussie supermodel on a TV-show sharing a cake-recipe where she used ground vanilla. She said it was from loving earth, which I found out was an internet store after some googling. VOILA! I ordered it, and a couple of days later I had the parcel at my door step.

This is how it looks like:

Now, it wasn't cheap: This 75 gram container was around 20 dollars (if I remember correctly). But, you only ever use a teaspoon, so it will last forever! What I like about baking with real, ground vanilla, is that you get these little black vanilla grains that makes your ice-cream etc look really gourmet-ish. Plus it tastes yum, and that it's organic doesn't hurt! Use in teas, coffees, smoothies - and of course all your low-carb treats.

I can not recommend this product highly enough for your low carb baking.