Having a
sweet tooth from time to time, I set myself the challenge to refine my
Grandma´s cheesecake recipe to a low carb version. After having baked a lot of
bread and cake since starting my KetOntrack journey, I used all the gathered
knowledge and was achieving on my third run the desired result.

I like the
moist consistency and unobtrusive sweetness of these cheesecakes. Of course,
you can add as well fruits, i.e. plums, which will then enlarge the carb
profile due to fruit sugar naturally given.

• Servings: 6
• Preparation time: 30 minutes
• Baking time: 25 minutes

Ingredients:

Cake base:

1 Medium Egg, one Egg Yolk
60g Grinded almonds
1 tbsp. Carob Gum flour
30 g melted butter (not hot)
30g Xylite sugar
15g Erythrite powder sugar
1.5 tsp. Vanilla Extract
1 tbsp Heavy Cream 30%

Filling:

100g curd or cream cheese, low fat
100g Crème fraiche
65g Erythrite powder sugar
10g xylite sugar
3 medium eggs, egg white left from the cake base
Lemon peel from one lemon
1.5 tsp vanilla extract
8g Instant vanilla sauce powder

Nutrients per Serving:

Calories: 230 kcal
Protein: 8,4g
Carbs 3,0g
Fat: 18,3g

Preparation:

1. Mix the cake base ingredients in a mixer until creamy. Make sure it includes one egg and one egg yolk. Save the egg white for the filling.
2. Prepare 6 molds, grease them with butter. Put a thin layer of batter into the molds and the inner sides of the molds.
3. Preheat oven to 175 °C (Air Circulation Oven), 200 ° C (Normal electric oven).
4. Separate the eggs and add egg yolk to the ingredients. Keep one egg yolk and cover with heavy cream in a small cup. Keep egg white in a separate container.
5. Mix all the ingredients until creamy. Beat the egg white stiff and gently mix with the cream.
6. Add the cream into the molds with the prepared batter.
7. Bake for 25 minutes. After 20 minutes, mix the heavy cream and the egg yolk left. Apply gently with a brush the cream and egg mix onto the cheesecakes. Finish baking in 5 minutes until browned.
8. After cooling the cheesecakes, consume slightly warm or cold.

I hope you enjoy baking the cheesecake and it tastes as desired. Let me know if you like the recipe.

Thanks, Cee kay.

Having been in Australia for an extended period, my Family and myself adopted local customs pretty quick. One of these were to have Banana Bread, preferably toasted, on several occasions (Breakfast, Lunch, Desert for Dinner, etc…). Now how Australians like their Banana Bread, pretty much breaks any diet, due to the massive amount of sugar included as well as wheat flour. Since I really don´t want to miss a Banana Bread every once in a while, I created a recipe, based on my original one, replacing some ingredients and balancing the rest of the ingredients, for a good outcome, but I come to that later.

First of all, since Banana Bread includes a lot of sugar, I researched for a proper replacement. The one I concluded was Xylite, which is made from birch wood and is an ethanol derivate. There are other alternatives, which can´t replace sugar 1:1 in most cases for the dough, and a lot are of pure chemical nature, which isn´t desirable for me.

Xylite comes with only 40% of calories compared to refined sugar, as well as in unrefined cane sugar for example. Xylite can´t be metabolized, which makes it a suitable sweetener for diabetics even, given it´s very low glycaemic index. Too much Xylite can cause some digestive problems in the beginning, when consuming above ~30g per day, so far, I have not recognized this impact on me.

Most of you will know Xylite from chewing gum, where it has been added as a sweetener because of other positive side effects on plaque, pH value and teeth health in general.

Wheat flour was the second carb source, which I wanted to replace, due to high carbs and other well known negative factors. I have been generally replacing wheat flour already in most recipes with grinded almonds in the past in a ~1,5 ratio. For example, when 350g of (wheat) flour are to be added in a recipe, I cut it by half and replaced 1,5 factors amount grinded almonds, means 175g wheat flour and ~250g grinded almonds. Now grinded almonds itself contain oil and they are not really suitable to create a dough that will rise and have a good consistency, hence somewhat flour needed to stay in the recipe.

Now my research concluded that almond flour can substitute wheat flour in cake and pastry just fine, but I keep the grinded almonds, as they add a nice consistency and taste. Almond flour tastes well and does not bring a distinct taste like other potential replacement candidates i.e. lentils flour. The almond flour should be de-oiled and organic, emulsifying properly the dough, enabling it to rise. Generally almond flour will need more fluid in the dough, as it swells / soaks around 1/3 more fluid compared to wheat flour. Almond flour has lot´s of proteins and vitamins as well as low carbs.

An important factor is that almond flour tastes sweet, which I found quite useful as I could reduce the amount of sugar replaced via Xylite.

I found that this approach replacing sugar and flour, will massively reduce calories and generally glycaemic index from pasty and cake. As one of the next steps, I am looking into replacing baking soda with similar organic components (cream of tartar) in the future, as well as making yeast dough (where yeast requires sugar in order to serve it´s purpose) but this requires some experimenting in the future.

Stay tuned and find the recipe for Banana Bread here: Low Carb Aussie Style Banana Bread

Cheers,
Cee Kay