Low Carb Chocolate Chip Ice Cream

I love my Low Carb Vanilla Ice Cream! I used it as a base for this cool version with chocolate chips because… Well, you know how much I love chocolate, too!

Chill out and enjoy!

Low Carb Chocolate Chip Ice Cream

1 cup heavy whipping cream

1 cup unsweetened vanilla almond milk (I used Silk)

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

1 tablespoon granular allulose

1/2 cup powdered erythritol

1 tablespoon inulin (chicory root fiber)

1 teaspoon glucomannan powder

1 heaping tablespoon (1 oz or 60 chips) Lily’s Dark Chocolate Baking Chips

Measure cream and almond milk into a 2 cup or larger measuring cup. Whisk in vanilla and allulose. Set aside.

In a small bowl, mix together erythritol, inulin, and glucomannan powder until no lumps remain. Add liquid mixture and whisk together well.

Pour mixture into ice cream maker’s container and freeze according to your ice cream maker’s directions. (My ice cream maker takes about 30-35 minutes for the paddle to stop moving.) Remove the paddle and stir in chocolate chips. Divide ice cream into 2 pint-size freezable containers.

Put containers in a regular freezer for at least 1/2 hour to harden. If you let it freeze solid, you can set it out for an hour or so to soften before eating.

Makes 2 approximately 1 1/2 cup servings with about 5 net carbs each. You can double/triple/quadruple or whatever you need the batch to use a larger ice cream maker and/or make more servings.

Low Carb Vanilla Ice Cream

Some people think vanilla ice cream is plain and boring, but I like it by itself. It’s also great as a topping for other desserts or as a base to mix other yummy ingredients into.

However you like it, here’s where it all starts!

Low Carb Vanilla Ice Cream

1 cup heavy whipping cream

1 cup unsweetened vanilla almond milk (I used Silk)

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

1 tablespoon granular allulose

1/2 cup powdered erythritol

1 tablespoon inulin (chicory root fiber)

1 teaspoon glucomannan powder

Measure cream and almond milk into a 2 cup or larger measuring cup. Whisk in vanilla and allulose. Set aside.

In a small bowl, mix together erythritol, inulin, and glucomannan powder until no lumps remain. Add liquid mixture and whisk together well.

Pour mixture into ice cream maker’s container and freeze according to your ice cream maker’s directions. (My ice cream maker takes about 30-35 minutes for the paddle to stop moving.) Remove the paddle and divide ice cream into 2 pint-size freezable containers.

Put containers in a regular freezer for at least 1/2 hour to harden. If you let it freeze solid, you can set it out for an hour or so to soften before eating.

Makes 2 approximately 1 1/2 cup servings with about 4 net carbs each. You can double/triple/quadruple or whatever you need the batch to use a larger ice cream maker and/or make more servings.

Low Carb Coffee Ice Cream

I have to admit, I’ve really enjoyed being able to find real ice cream that is low carb and contains ingredients my BGL and weight agree with for the past year. But Rebel ice cream can get a little expensive if I enjoy it often… Which I’ve been doing, especially with the recent heatwaves!

So… time for more kitchen experiments! There are so many more low carb ingredients available than when I made my Rich & Creamy Low Carb Chocolate Ice Cream recipe. Though I like that recipe, I really wanted to use an ice cream maker for my new experiments.

So I splurged and bought myself an ice cream maker. Years ago, I had the kind with the bowl you freeze and then make your ice cream in it, but I don’t have it any more and I wanted one that has a compressor so I don’t have to find room in my little freezer for a bowl to pre-freeze. You can use the kind with a bowl you freeze if you want. Or even the old fashioned kind that takes ice and rock salt!

I found a little ice cream maker with a compressor that makes about 4 cups of ice cream, which is perfect for me to eat half and save the other half for later. I just got my ice cream maker last week and have made two experiments so far.

I try to stay away from caffeine, so my first experiment was coffee ice cream using decaf coffee powder. I was happy with the texture, but needed to double the coffee to be able to taste it. This is the result of my 2nd experiment and I’m really pleased with how it turned out. It’s really easy to make and requires no cooking.

Low Carb Coffee Ice Cream

1 cup heavy whipping cream

1 cup unsweetened vanilla almond milk (I used Silk)

2 tablespoons granular allulose

2 teaspoons decaf coffee powder

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/2 cup powdered erythritol

2 tablespoons inulin (chicory root fiber)

1 teaspoon glucomannan powder

Measure cream and almond milk into a 2 cup or larger measuring cup or small bowl. Whisk in allulose and coffee powder until the coffee powder is completely dissolved. Whisk in vanilla.

In a medium bowl, mix remaining dry ingredients well, making sure no lumps remain. Add liquid ingredients and whisk together well.

Pour into ice cream maker container. Freeze according to the directions on your ice cream maker; mine takes 30-35 minutes for the paddle to stop turning. Remove ice cream from maker container and divide into 2 freezable containers. Put in regular freezer for at least 1/2 hour if you want it to set up more.

If you freeze your ice cream solid, you can let it sit out for an hour or so to soften. If you have a microwave with a soften setting you can use that for 1 pint.

This makes 2 approximately 1 pint servings with 4 net carbs and 455 calories each. If you want smaller servings, just divide and do the math for macros. You can also double/triple/quadruple the recipe or whatever multiplication you need to make a larger batch to freeze in a larger ice cream maker.

Fiberful Low Carb Bread Picture

Fiberful Low Carb Bread

Picture of Fiberful Low Carb Bread.

Fiberful Low Carb Bread

Fiberful Low Carb Bread

I’ve been experimenting with my original Multi Fiber Low Carb Bread recipe. This new version has fewer calories but more fiber. I’m calling it Fiberful Low Carb Bread because it has 10g of fiber per serving.

I use a Cuisinart bread machine, but you can also make this bread without a bread machine if you’d like; info for doing that is in the recipe instructions.

Fiberful Low Carb Bread

2 cups warm water

4 tablespoons salted butter

3 large eggs, room temp

3 tablespoons unflavored gelatin powder

2 tablespoons psyllium husk powder

1 tablespoon salt

2 tablespoons granular erythritol or erythritol/monk fruit blend

1/4 cup inulin

1 cup flaxseed meal

1 cup oat fiber

2 cups vital wheat gluten

2 tablespoons active dry yeast

Since I keep my eggs in the refrigerator, the first thing I do is put 3 eggs (still in the shell) in a small bowl with very warm water so they can warm up while I get started assembling my ingredients. It only takes a few minutes for them to be warm enough. Don’t use hot water or you’ll cook the eggs! I also take any other refrigerated ingredients out of the fridge so they can warm up to room temp.

You can mix ingredients right in your bread machine’s bread pan, but I like to start out with a glass 4 cup measuring cup. In it, I measure out the 2 cups (very warm) water, then cut the butter up into several small pieces and let them melt in the water while stirring with a fork. By then, my eggs should be warm enough so I crack them and add to the liquid, continuing to stir with the fork until all is blended.

Keep stirring between additions of gelatin powder, psyllium, salt, erythritol, and inulin until no lumps remain. At this point, I pour the liquid mixture into my bread machine’s bread pan.

Without stirring, add the flaxmeal, oat fiber and vital wheat gluten on top of the liquid mixture. Make a little well in the middle of the dry ingredients and put the yeast in it. Don’t mix it in or allow it to touch the liquid ingredients.

My bread machine has a low carb setting, so I set it to a 2 pound low carb loaf with light crust. (If you don’t have a low carb setting, you can try a basic white or wheat setting.) The settings I use include 16 minutes of mixing/kneading followed by 15 minutes rising, 10 seconds kneading, 75 minutes rising, then 82 minutes baking. I’ve found the baking time makes the crust darker than I’d like in my machine, so I take it out 10 minutes before the end of the baking cycle.

If you don’t have a bread machine, you can use these times as a guide for kneading your bread by hand or stand mixer (the dough will be sticky), letting it rise in bread pan(s), and baking it in your oven. I would suggest baking at 350 degrees for about 30 minutes to start, then check it frequently to see if it’s browned and done.

When the bread is finished baking, remove it from the bread pan(s) to cool on a wire rack. It’s hard to resist slicing it right away, but it will slice much better if you let it cool first. I keep it at room temp for a couple of days, but then store it in a container in the fridge so it stays fresh longer.

This can be sliced in varying thicknesses, but if you slice it in 16 slices, each slice contains about 3g net carbs, 10g fiber, 16g protein, and 145 calories.

This is my favorite bread for making grilled cheese sandwiches. The crust is slightly crunchy, but the inside is soft and grilling it makes it even more moist inside. YUM! Guess what I’m having for lunch today!

Multi Fiber Low Carb Bread Picture

Picture of Multi Fiber Low Carb Bread

Multi Fiber Low Carb Bread

Multi Fiber Low Carb Bread

I left my bread machine behind when I moved a decade ago. At the time, I couldn’t find the ingredients I needed to make my own bread with yeast that was truly low carb and truly a yeast bread, too. Now we have a lot more ingredients available to us at home and though I really enjoy Great Low Carb Bread Company’s thin-sliced bread, it gets expensive and I’ve been itching to make my own bread again so I can completely control the ingredients… And have that wonderful aroma of freshly baking bread wafting through my house!

I recently bought a new Cuisinart bread machine and have scoured the internet and cookbooks for a low carb recipe. I have tried a couple of variations of a popular online version of yeast bread that a bunch of people have copied with minor adjustments, but though the taste was good, it wouldn’t rise for me.

There are recipes using almond flour and/or coconut flour, but as much as I like to cook with these, I didn’t want them in my yeast bread. I also didn’t want to put sugar in my bread, even though some people say the yeast “eats it all.” Still others say sugar is not necessary at all (though it can take a long time to rise without it).

So I made a list of everything in my pantry and fridge that I might want to put in my own low carb yeast bread recipe. I wanted lots of fiber and plenty of protein, but not a lot of carbs or calories. I was okay using eggs, but not a lot of them like some other recipes. It also needed to taste and feel like a yeast bread.

This is what I created. It is hearty like a multi grain bread, but since it’s not full of grains, I call it a “multi fiber” bread. It does contain gluten, but no sugar and few carbs. I don’t call it “Keto bread” even if it would fit that category because I didn’t worry about hitting all the right macros and ingredients to follow Keto rules.

Multi Fiber Low Carb Bread

2 cups warm water
2 tablespoons psyllium husk powder
3 large eggs, room temp, lightly beaten
4 tablespoons salted butter, cut in several small pieces
2 teaspoons salt
1/4 cup inulin
1 tablespoon unflavored gelatin powder
1 cup flaxseed meal
3/4 cup oat fiber
1/4 cup hemp hearts
2 cups vital wheat gluten
2 tablespoons active dry yeast

Make sure your ingredients (other than the warm water) are at room temp. Place the warm (not hot) water, psyllium, beaten eggs, and butter in the bread machine’s bread pan. Stir and let the butter melt. Add salt and inulin; stir again. (Or you can do this in a separate bowl or measuring cup before adding to the bread pan.) Then sprinkle the gelatin over the liquid ingredients in the bread pan.

Add the flaxseed meal, oat fiber, hemp hearts, and vital wheat gluten to the bread pan in that order; do not stir. Make a small well in the center of the dry ingredients and put the yeast in it. It should be shallow enough that the yeast does not touch the liquid ingredients.

My bread machine has a low carb setting, so I set it to a 2 pound low carb loaf with light crust. (If you don’t have a low carb setting, you can try a basic white or wheat setting.) The settings I use include 16 minutes of mixing/kneading followed by 15 minutes rising, 10 seconds kneading, 75 minutes rising, then 82 minutes baking.

If you don’t have a bread machine, you can use these times as a guide for kneading your bread by hand or stand mixer (the dough may be a little sticky), letting it rise in bread pan(s), and baking it in your oven. I would suggest baking at 350 degrees for about 30 minutes to start, then check it frequently to see if it’s browned and done.

When the bread is finished baking, take it out of the bread pan(s) and let it cool on a wire rack. It’s hard to resist trying a slice right away, but it will slice easier when it’s cool.

I didn’t mix the psyllium with the wet ingredients at first and the heel was a little gritty when trying the bread right away. But the slight grittiness disappeared overnight and I think mixing the psyllium with the wet ingredients lessens it, too. You can leave it out if it bothers you, but that lowers the fiber content.

This can be sliced in varying thicknesses, but if you slice it in 16 slices, each slice contains about 3g net carbs, 9g fiber, 16g protein, and 157 calories.

I hope you enjoy having a full loaf of low carb yeast bread as much as I do! I love using it to make grilled cheese sandwiches. It is very filling and really hits the spot. YUM!

Happy New Decade!

Hope your new year and new decade are starting off well. Where did the 2010s go?!

I was happy to start my 2020 off with an A1c of 4.9. Hope to keep it there or lower from now on, but I know from experience it doesn’t always cooperate… Even when I stick to the same very low carb eating plan I’ve been doing for many years.

When that happens, I remind myself that what I’m doing is so much better than doing nothing at all and to just keep on keeping on. Sometimes I need to reexamine what I’ve been eating to find the culprit and sometimes it’s from other factors, like overheating or illness. Sometimes I can’t find a cause, but eventually my A1c comes back down if I stick to eating very low carb and not doing things that cause me to get too hot.

For the past few months, I’ve had to pace myself as I have been doing some remodeling on my house. When I get finished remodeling and putting everything in place, I will work on remodeling this website. In the meantime, please excuse the broken links!

My DARdreams.com website (not this one) no longer exists, so any links I have here that refer to it aren’t going to work. Most of those are for ingredients in my recipes that used to lead to a page that gave info and sources for those ingredients. Thankfully, many of the ingredients we used to have to buy online are now available in local stores. Yay!

I am happy to see Keto getting so popular. That’s basically what I’ve been doing all these years, but without figuring out all the details. I just eat very low carb with adequate protein and fats. The popularity of Keto has resulted in lots of healthy choices for eating low carb without a lot of processing and/or soy included.

Keto recipes are also abundant now. Most of my recipes are Keto friendly or can easily be adapted to Keto. For that reason, I plan to keep this website and update it so my recipes can still be accessed by those who enjoy them.

My DARdreams.com website stopped supporting the platform I used to build it and rather than start from scratch with another platform there, I considered putting that energy into this (my original) website instead. When the price there increased, that sealed the deal. So please be patient while I get my physical home in order; I hope to get this DARdreams home in better shape than ever soon!

Wishing you a very good 2020 and beyond. Let’s keep living a healthy low carb life together!

Merry Christmas 2018!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Hope you have had a good year and have started or continued following a low carb lifestyle. (Or these days, it can be called a Keto lifestyle.) If so, well done! If not, there’s no time like the present to start or restart a healthy lifestyle. You don’t even have to wait until the New Year to make a difference in your health.

I am so thankful for the technology we have available to us at home to keep track of how our choices affect our bodies. We have home glucometers and even home A1c tests so we can see how we’re doing without having to visit the doctor’s office.

I am so pleased I was able to test at home a few days ago and see that my A1c is 4.9! It may not always be such good news, but that just gives me the incentive to make better choices so my next test will show a better level.

I hope you’re taking advantage of technology to see how your choices are affecting your BGL and A1c and making adjustments when necessary to meet your goals. My personal goal is to keep my A1c under 5, which is at a non-diabetic level. I’m happy my last test showed I’ve met my goal… For now! I know it won’t stay there without constant vigilance, but constant vigilance is already my normal lifestyle.

For Christmas dinner, I plan to have roast chicken, whipped cauliflower with coconut flour gravy, olives, and a broccoli/cauliflower/squash medley. Now I’m off to make myself a Mini Raspberry Pie for my Christmas dessert tomorrow. YUM!  8+d

Again, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Reversing Diabetes?

There are different definitions for reversing diabetes depending on whom you ask. It’s not the same as curing diabetes. To me, a cure would mean taking an OGTT (Oral Glucose Tolerance Test) and staying at a truly nondiabetic level (not even pre-diabetic) without the use of meds, just as someone who has never had diabetes would. There are researchers working on a cure, but as far as I know, they haven’t achieved one in humans yet.

In my opinion reversal would be not only halting the progress of diabetes, but improving symptoms of the disease, such as high BGLs (Blood Glucose Levels) and A1c, liver and kidney function, etc, to healthy nondiabetic levels. Ideally, this would be achieved without meds. The only way I know to achieve this is by living a low carb lifestyle. This is what I strive to maintain myself.

Here are definitions according to Virta:

“The terms ‘reversed’ and ‘cured’ mean very different things. Type 2 diabetes can be ‘reversed’ but not ‘cured’ because the disease will come back if long-term behavior change is not successfully maintained. There are still several points of debate around the term ‘reversal’ — in particular, how long HbA1c and medication reduction success have to last for the diabetes to be considered reversed. Since diabetes reversal is a relatively new term, there is no universally accepted definition by the scientific community or agencies like the American Diabetes Association or American Medical Association. Thus many medical professionals are still unaware that reversal is even possible.”

Virta is a group whose stated goal is to reverse diabetes in 100 million people by 2025. I am extremely happy to see them succeeding in getting the word out about living a keto (very low carb) lifestyle to achieve that goal. Check them out. Even if you don’t sign up for their treatment plan, there is a lot of great info at their site.