First Harvest? Quick, get in the kitchen! No time for questions - move! move! move!

I do love New Mexico, but I prefer the greener, crisper, and moderately hilly areas of the world which are, unfortunately, not where I live currently.*  I am fan of the cooler climates, in no small part because using the oven in the summer is absolutely 

Although, dressing like that for a day in the kitchen seems like a great day to me.  Just sayin'...

Anyway, here it is early August, and I put on my broiler just to make sure the melted cheese on my garden-harvest-inspired Keto Eggplant Parmesan was just right.  And look at that bad boy. 

Nailed it.

Very few ingredients in this one.  

• Eggplant (from my garden)
• Grape Tomatoes (also from my garden)
• Mozzarella Cheese (not from my garden)
• Schrodinger's Garlic (which simultaneously may or may not be from my garden)**
• Oils/Butters on hand. (I chose a mixture of grape seed and coconut oils)
• Salt (I opted for pink Himalayan sea salt

Cook the chopped, unpeeled eggplant in a cast iron pan with your oils and garlic. About 30-40 minutes on medium heat stirring occasionally, adding more oil and garlic as needed.

Salt the eggplant (pinch from the salt cellar and drizzle over - I never measure it but maybe 1/2 tsp?) Add the chopped tomatoes, reduce the heat by a third, and cook down the chopped, unpeeled grape tomatoes.

Heat up the broiler

Cut up a ball of fresh mozzarella into a couple dozen chunks, and place them around the top of the cast iron pan.  Move the pan to under the broiler for about 12 minutes.

BRING ON THE YUM!

  One of the new fun toys I picked up for my kitchen witchery is an Ulu

"The Legendary Knife of the Arctic!"***

It was so fun to use, I think I got drunk with ease-of-chopping power and neglected to take pictures of the eggplant.  Thankfully, I came to my senses at some point before I finished my devil-may-care chop-a-thon.

Not everything is a candidate for the Ulu. I would stick to produce and nuts.

According to Wikipedia, An ulu (Inuktitut syllabics: ᐅᓗ, plural: uluit, English: "woman's knife"^[1]) is an all-purpose knife traditionally used by Inuit, Yupik, and Aleut women. It is utilized in applications as diverse as skinning and cleaning animals, cutting a child's hair, cutting food, as a weapon and, if necessary, trimming blocks of snow and ice used to build an igloo.


And I probably would reach for it if I had to skin an animal... but that'd be a topic for another time, eh?

(Or the rattlesnake recipe from the AFOIAF cookbook that I will make one day, I swear I will.)


* Some of those areas DO exist in New Mexico. Albuquerque is just not one of them
** It's really just garlic.  Minced, for the record.
*** You should totally hear that in Steve Martin's voice. I do.

How Complaining Rewires Your Brain for Negativity

Your brain loves efficiency and doesn’t like to work any harder than it has to. When you repeat a behavior, such as complaining, your neurons branch out to each other to ease the flow of information. This makes it much easier to repeat that behavior in the future—so easy, in fact, that you might not even realize you’re doing it.  

Read more at the HuffPost Blog...

Keto Chocolate Birthday Cake - Part 2: Have your cake and eat it too

So picking up where we left off yesterday ...

First of all, I've been baking for quite a long time. I limit baking to the winter months, when it's cold enough outside to truly appreciate the warmth that comes from the hearth and oven. In all these years, I never once realized that baking powder has aluminum. That's bad. 

But it turns out that there is an aluminum free option, which is what I used in this recipe, and it seems the only way to go from here on out.

So the secret ingredient in this cake is ... zucchini!

Keto chocolate birthday cake

Full disclosure: I got the cake recipe from here.

Ingredients

 

1/2 cup coconut flour

1/2 cup Hersheys unsweetened cocoa powder

1 cup erithrytol

20-30 drops liquid stevia

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

 

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 cup coconut oil, liquefied

4 large eggs, beaten

1 teaspoon vanilla

2 cups zucchini, shredded and drained

1 bar Chocoperfection Milk Chocolate, smashed with glee by a small child wielding a silver hammer*

* or, you know, sugar free chocolate chips. 

It's your call. 

   I went with the hammer wielding child.

   It's what I had on hand. 

1. In a large mixing bowl, stir together dry ingredients: coconut flour, cocoa, powdered sweetener, cinnamon, baking soda, baking powder and salt. 
2. In a separate bowl, mix eggs, coconut oil, liquid sweetener, and vanilla. Combine with dry ingredients.
3. Add in zucchini and chocolate pieces
4. Pour mixture into a greased pan (the original recipe calls for a 9x9 pan.)
5. Bake at 350 degrees for about 40 minutes, or until toothpick inserted into center comes out clean

It was at step 4 that things started to go horribily somewhat awry...

I don't have a 9x9 pan, so I greased up a 9 x 4.5 loaf pan .  In hindsight, I think this would have come out much better had I used the suggested size. 

Because the mixture was so thick, Step 5 morphed from:

Bake at 350 degrees for about 40 minutes, or until toothpick inserted into center comes out clean

into something more like this

Bake at 350 degrees for about 40 minutes, 

Check center with toothpick 12 inch skewer**

Add 15 more minutes

Check center with skewer again

Add another 25 minutes

Check center with same skewer

Add another 15 minutes, start to worry.

Check center with skewer yet again

Start to feel better that progress is being made. Add 15 minutes anyway

Skewer

5 minutes

Skewer

Ok, that's good enough

** Go big or go home, baby.

When all was said and done, the cake tasted great! I had initially hoped to cut it in half and make it a layer cake, but I doubted the structural integrity would hold up given the uneven cooking between the edges and the middle.

 

The edges were a bit more crispy than I'd have liked, but overall the cake very good nonetheless!

Truly, the ultimate test was whether or not this chocolate frosted birthday cake satisfied the tastes and traditions of my good friend and keto partner.

I was told in no uncertain terms that it did.*** 

*** Understatement. Victory!

 

I am going to make this again, with some changes... slightly less erithrytol in the cake itself, more fats to increase moisture (considering avocado mayo), and using a 9x9 pan. I'm keeping the hammer wielding child. I think it's important for kids to learn their way around a kitchen. With a hammer.

Category: Keto 

Tags: Recipes