I’ve been experimenting with this low-carb muffin recipe. It’s pretty good. Yesterday I added a couple spoonfuls of peanut butter to the batter, which turned out really well. Today I tried putting in some frozen blueberries (thawed, of course) and some cinnamon. They tasted great, but I couldn’t get them out of the muffin pan in one piece. The bottoms stuck and the tops pulled off. What am I doing wrong? I sprayed the tin with “Butta” (that’s seriously what it’s called), which is basically a “Pam”-like cooking spray. Should I use something else? Am I baking too long/not long enough? Let me know if you have any guesses. Meanwhile I’m going to have to (regrettably) eat all the leftover yummy muffin bits stuck to the pan. Pity me.

The Snook has been cruising various low-carb websites in search of recipes to emulate the high-carb stuff we’ve been missing. Yesterday he picked up lots of almond meal and ground flax seeds in preparation for doing some baking. We spotted some blueberries at the greengrocer and I flashed back to Max’s blueberry-banana muffins. Armed with an idea, the Snook took to the kitchen for some invention. The resulting muffins don’t look so great, but they taste pretty good and it’s nice to eat something “bread-y” again. We estimate they’ve got about 12 grams of carbs each, so you’d best avoid them if you’re doing Induction.

Ingredients:

• 5 tablespoons melted butter
• 3 large eggs
• 1/4 cup cream
• 1/3 cup artificial sweetener (we use “Splenda”)
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 3/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 3/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 cup flax seed meal
• 1/4 cup soy flour
• 1 small banana, mashed
• 1/2 cup blueberries

Preheat the oven to 375F.

Beat the first three ingredients together, then add the sweetener and vanilla. In another bowl mix up all the dry ingredients. Then combine the wet and dry together and add the fruit. Now fill up your muffin cups and pop them in the oven. The Snook reckons they need to bake for 20-25 minutes, but test by poking them.

He made six fairly big muffins out of this. They don’t rise a lot, so you can fill the cups up pretty full. The resulting muffins are dark brown and pretty dense, but the fruit makes them taste great. They’ve got lots of fiber too.

Let us know if you make any yummy modifications!

In need of a challenge, I decided that tonight I would attempt a culinary feat that has set cooks a-trembling since the Dawn of Man: making my own homemade pizza from scratch. Armed only with the Better Homes and Gardens cookbook and the memories of watching my mom do it a bazillion times, I proceeded to make a large, floury mess of my kitchen. The kneading part was enjoyable, though I proceeded to get goo all through my hair. Once the yeast beast was “resting” in a covered dish, I suddenly remembered that I had only one pan suitable for baking a pie on. “Oh well,” I thought. “There isn’t that much dough, really. I’ll just use it all on one pizza.” (Take a note, kids. Never double up on your pizza dough.) Strike one. While that monstrous slab was baking in the oven, I turned my attention to the toppings. Wanting to be professional, I sliced my onions very thin. Thin to the point of shriveling into tiny charred strands of nothingness after being baked. Strike two. (Always remember to cut veggies into substantial chunks to avoid oven disintegration.) And lastly, as I was spreading the cheese over the top of this aberration (the dough had formed a lovely dome in the center, so everything slid towards the crust), I realized that simply picking the “white” shredded cheese doesn’t guarantee mozzarella in this country, but instead nine times out of ten you’ve got low-fat cheddar. Which kinda sucked. Strike three, I’m out.

Actually it was edible. As someone once said, “Pizza is like sex. Even when it’s bad it’s still pretty good.” (I’m paraphrasing.) This was edible, though the ratio of crust-to-topping was off by about a factor of four. The Snook, bless him, politely praised it and only revealed his true feelings when he let slip a tiny “Were you supposed to put salt in this?” Ouch. Well, there’s always Papa.