oat flour – The Cookbook Experiment

Chocolate-Peanut Butter Banana Cake

The last few weeks have been crazy busy for me, but I loved every minute of them! We had my sister, brother-in-law, and their youngest son here for a week!! I love getting to spend time with my sister! Although the majority of the week was filled with church meetings and fellowship suppers, we did manage to snag some time to ourselves and do a little shopping before they had to leave at the end of the week.

I did quite a bit of grocery shopping before they got here and totally forgot that Barb would be bringing a cooler of things with her. Believe me, my fridge was packed once everything was put away! By the end of the week, it was rather empty! Still is, by the way! Just haven’t gotten to the store yet to restock!

We had 2 lone bananas left which were rapidly ripening, so I knew it was time to bake something using those ‘nanas! There is a great recipe in the new THM cookbook for a banana cake. I took the basic recipe and added a twist…cocoa powder and peanut butter powder…for a fabulous flavor! I used a 9×9 square baking pan and cut the cake into 9 pieces. By my calculations, it comes to only 31 carbs per piece, which makes it a great E snack. Topped with a bit of low-fat whipped topping, it makes a delicious snack…or breakfast…or lunch…

010

2 ripe bananas

2 droppers of liquid Stevia

1 c. plain Greek yogurt

1 c. egg whites

1 tsp. vanilla

1/2 tsp. butter flavoring

2 c. oat flour

1/2 c. old-fashioned oats

1/4 tsp. salt

2 tsp. baking powder

1 tsp. baking soda

1/2 c. sweetener (I use Pyure)

2 heaping tbsp. cocoa powder

2 tbsp. peanut butter powder

Lightly coat a 9×9 pan with coconut spray oil.

Mash the bananas in a large bowl. Add the liquid Stevia, yogurt, egg whites, vanilla, and butter flavoring. Mix well.

Combine the remaining ingredients in a separate bowl. Add to the liquid ingredients and stir well. Pour batter into the prepared pan. Bake at 350 degrees for about 35 minutes. Let cool in the pan.

Serve warm with a dollop of whipped cream!

Low-Carb Flour Blend

Finding the right type of flour to bake with while trying to eat on the THM plan has not been easy. The family still loves baked goods, but wheat flour is full of carbs. After playing around a bit with mixing flours, I think that I have found one that works for us. I might still toy with it, but for the most part, this blend works. It has just 31 grams of carbs per cup as opposed to 88 grams per cup of all-purpose flour and 117 grams/cup of whole wheat flour. Lots of ladies over on the THM Face Book page have created their own flour blends, and there are quite a few on Pinterest. If you are wanting to cut back on your carb intake this holiday season, but still want to have yummy baked goods, give this a try…or create your own! It isn’t that hard at all!

2 c. oat flour*

1 c. coconut flour

1 c. almond flour

1/2 c. ground flax

Mix together and keep in a labeled container. That’s all there is to it! Enjoy some low-carb baking!

*I buy old fashioned oats and grind them in my Ninja to make oat flour.

VBS 2015

We just completed VBS at our church today! It was a wonderfully busy, crazy week! We had more children this year than we’ve had any other year! The most we had was 169, but the average per day for the week was closer to 163. I loved working with the youngest age group! They were well-behaved and responded well all week long! What a blessing to be able to teach these little ones about Children of the Bible, which was the theme this year!

Throughout the week workers will take home-baked goodies in for all the helpers to snack on. I took various muffins and brownies this week, but the favorite was my Kilo Crunch Bars that I would make for my son when he was a cadet at The Citadel. You can find that recipe here. This time I used oat flour and an oat/almond/coconut/flax flour blend that I put together instead of wheat/white flours. It was fantastic!

Low-Carb Cream Cheese Waffles

Here in the South we are experiencing what my mother always called the January Thaw. While we had seriously cold temperatures not long ago, and then 6 days of dreary skies with no sunshine last week, today was beautifully sunny and close to 60 degrees! Unfortunately, the wind has a bite to it, but I have enjoyed the warm sun today!

Last week I decided to make some low-carb waffles. I discovered the recipe back before Christmas, but just didn’t get around to making these waffles. They are absolutely delicious! You can see the recipe here. The only change I made was to use oat flour instead of oat fiber. I also made up half the recipe because I didn’t want lots of left overs if the hubby didn’t like them. That was a mistake! We both loved them! Give them a try! You will love them, too!

Cherry Nut Bread, Low-Carb Style

I’ve been learning a lot by following the Trim Healthy Mama Facebook page, and it is not just about recipes! The ladies on that page come up with wonderful ideas to help make life easier as they try to lose weight and get healthy. My favorite tip so far has to be this creative way to make pouring those half-gallon Mason jars full of wonderful beverages.

Isn’t this a great idea? I just cut around a pour spout from a carton of almond milk and used it as the flat lid with the ring to my Mason jar. Seriously, why didn’t I think of this? I’m telling you, these ladies are absolutely brilliant!

One of the favorite recipes in our home at Christmas is this delicious cherry nut bread. I first discovered this recipe while I was still in college. I baked it for my parents who just loved it. Once I got married, I made it for the hubby and for friends as gifts. You can read the recipe here.

Now that we are trying to eat a low-carb diet, I had to figure out a way to make this recipe without all the carbs, so that we could still enjoy it. While it doesn’t taste the same, it is a good substitute. I followed the basic recipe but made these substitutions:

1. I replaced the 2 c. flour with a combination of almond, coconut, and oat flours. I used 1 c. almond flour and 1/2 cup of each coconut and oat flours. I think when I make this again, I will switch the amounts of oat and almond flours.

2. I used stevia as my sweetener instead of sugar.

3. I used 1 cup of tart pie cherries instead of maraschino cherries.

We liked the flavor of this bread, but it is rather crumbly. I made the recipe into 16 muffins so that I could try to figure out the carbs per serving. If I did my math right, it comes out to 7 carbs per muffin. For those following the THM plan, these would be an S.

Cheesy Biscuit Low-Carb Pizza Crust

Ok, so, yeah, it’s been awhile since I’ve shared any recipes. It isn’t that I haven’t had the time, for I certainly do have time. It is mainly because I haven’t been experimenting with any new recipes recently. We did have a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner with some of the kiddlets here. We missed our oldest and our youngest this year. Having the fam spread out from Phoenix to Charleston and from Greenville to Virginia Beach does make it hard for all of us to gather together any more. For a while it looked like all four would be here for at least a day or so at the same time at Christmas. However, the retail business is keeping my girl away. So, the hubby and youngest 2 sons and I are planning to visit with her for Christmas while the oldest son, daughter-in-law, and my sweet darling will be visiting the other grandparents and family. While I will miss having them all together again (it has been over a year), I am so happy that Hope’s family will get to enjoy them and the Little Lady for over a week. I know they can’t wait to give the hugs and kisses!

Last night the hubby surprised me with an early Christmas gift. Since he has started to do more cooking, he felt that my old faithful pots and pans needed to be replaced with some updated new ones. Believe me, it was a real surprise!! I know I will enjoy using them, but now I have a dilemma…what to do with the old ones. I mean, they have served me well for over 26 years and are like old friends! While I am not a pack-rat in the true sense of the word, I am very sentimental, especially when the items were given to me by my parents or when part of the set actually belonged to my mom. Well, they will be boxed up for now. I’m just not ready to dispose of them yet. Here are my old ones:

And here are the new ones:

Ok, enough rambling! The other night the hubby and I were both interested in having pizza. We used to order pizza quite often, especially when there were college football games on. Since we’ve been eating the THM way, we haven’t ordered much pizza! This is remarkable for us! A few weeks ago I made the cauliflower crust pizza which really wasn’t bad at all. However, we both thought we wanted more of a bread-like crust, but needed to keep it low-carb. Someone over on the THM facebook page shared the idea of using a biscuit recipe as a pizza crust. The idea is brilliant!

The basic recipe that I used can be found here. This is what I did to make a pizza crust instead of biscuits.

1. I used a combination of oat flour and almond flour instead of the coconut flour.

2. I doubled the recipe which made enough crust for a 12-inch pizza.

3. After spreading the dough on the pizza pan (it is sticky, so don’t be worried), I baked it at 350* for about 7 minutes. After that, I added all the toppings that the hubby wanted and baked it again for about 7 more minutes or until the cheese melted into wonderful gooey-ness!

This was pretty amazing pizza! We both really enjoyed it. Give it a try! You will enjoy it, too!