Monthly Archives: October 2013

Frozen Yogurt Recipes

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Frozen yogurt is yummy and easy! It’s also a nice way to pack in a little extra protein. Nora LOVES them. Sometimes I get extra special thanks and hugs after she has one of these.

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Back when Nora started on MAD she needed so much protein and we had a hard time getting enough calories into her because she was always full. Back then, I bought a humongous container of unsweetened whey protein powder to sneak more protein into her diet and now I’m determined to use it up. It has the nice added property of making the smoothie a little extra thick. Honestly, I think that going more keto is easier on her because she gets enough calories from a smaller amount of food (remember, fat has more calories per gram than protein). We don’t have to wrestle more meat and cheese into her, which is a relief after always missing the protein mark with MAD.

Frozen yogurt is easy to whirl up in the food processor. I made this recipe for 7 servings so that I can whip up a batch after school and feed her 1 serving immediately as a smoothie, then freeze the remaining 6 servings in the popsicle molds for 6 more after-school snacks. Score.

As always, use these recipes as a guide for proportions and calculate using your own ingredients, checking with your dietician and/or Ketocalculator for exact nutritional information. You could concoct your own with any frozen berries that you like and to find the appropriate ratio for your child’s needs.

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Nutrition facts for one Berry Frozen Yogurt Pop, 72 g each. 2.3 g net carbs, 3.51:1 ratio. Nutrition information from www.caloriecount.com

Berry Frozen Yogurt
100 g Greek Gods Traditional Plain Greek Yogurt
262 g Organic Valley Heavy Whipping Cream
50 g frozen blueberries
80 g frozen raspberries
14 g Ultimate Nutrition plain whey protein powder
No-carb sweetener to taste. I put 1 packet of Cytra-K into the mix.

Weigh all ingredients except protein powder and blend in food processor or blender until smooth. While blending, add in the protein powder and continue to blend until very smooth.

Weigh out a 72 g smoothie and serve immediately. Weigh the remaining mixture into individual popsicle molds, 72 g each, and freeze.

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I impulse-bought these Tovolo bug pop molds at the end of summer, and I calibrated this recipe to fit into them. They make a larger pop than I had been making for Nora previously, which is nice as she grows older. They are also nice because 2 pops fit into 1 leaf-shaped stand, so I can put 1 leaf-stand on the gram scale and weigh out 2 popsicles. They fit on the scale better than some popsicle mold stands that are larger.

As long as the food processor is dirty, I just throw in a bunch of extra berries, yogurt and a bit of protein powder and make some smoothies and popsicles for Anders too. No reason for the keto-kid to get all of the treats. His seem super easy without measuring! Of course I use different popsicles molds for his, larger ones that I can’t use for any of Nora’s popsicles. And his are much deeper berry colored without all of that cream. It’s not tough to tell them apart.

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Nutritional information for one serving of Chocolate Chip Frozen Yogurt, 51 g each. Not shown here: 0.4 g fiber, lowering net carbs to 1.9 g. 3.53:1 ratio. Nutritional information by www.caloriecount.com.

Chocolate Chip Frozen Yogurt
90 g Greek Gods Traditional Plain Greek Yogurt
175 g Organic Valley Heavy Whipping Cream
10 g Ultimate Nutrition plain whey protein powder
24 g Green & Blacks Organic 85% Dark Chocolate
8 g Bob’s Red Mill vanilla extract
No-carb sweetener to taste. I use 1 packet of Cytra-K.

Makes 6 servings with 4 g of chocolate in each. It is important to make sure that the chocolate is evenly distributed to get the correct carb count and ratio. To get it right with minimum effort, first weigh the chocolate and chop in the food processor until it is quite fine. Scrape out as much as possible and divide into 6 popsicle molds, putting almost 4 g in each because there will be a bit left behind in the food processor. Try to get it as even as possible.

Screen Shot 2013-10-22 at 9.01.10 PMFor these, I use Tovolo Ice Cream Pop Molds. They accommodate around 50 g of mixture. I have 2 sets for some reason that I can’t remember, and for some reason I made this recipe to make 6 servings. Nobody is perfect.

Next, mix the remaining ingredients in the food processor. You will pick up any bits of chocolate that were left behind, but that’s ok because it will be fairly evenly distributed and it’s just a bit. If you want to be extremely precise, mix everything except the chocolate then scrape 4 g of chocolate into each pop individually.

Measure 47 g of of the yogurt-cream-protein mixture into each pop mold. This 4-pop stand also fits well on my gram scale. I just measure one out, tare it, and measure the next. I have to rotate the popsicles around so that I can easily pour into the next empty one. After all are full, carefully stir to distribute the chocolate bits, although kids won’t complain about getting a bite of chocolate at the top! Snap on the handles and freeze. Enjoy the delight of serving a fancy ice cream pop to your keto-kid.

Buttered up

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Word on the keto-street is that Organic Valley Heavy Whipping Cream is the only brand that consistently has no carbs. Their process is good enough to take only the fat and leave all of the lactose behind. And it’s organic–even better.

But we have a problem. We’ve notice that the Organic Valley cream we get from our local co-op is often very clumpy, while the Organic Valley cream that we get from another grocery store is consistently smoother.

So what’s going on in that clumpy container? In “On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen,” Harold McGee says it simply: “you agitate a container of cream until the fat globules are damaged and their fat leaks out and comes together into masses large enough to gather.” I suspect that the creamery trucks need better shocks to avoid all of that agitation.

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The clumps that we find are baby butter. We try to stir them back into the cream, but we are really just breaking them up for a more even distribution. When we heat cream with clumps, they turn into yellow pools of butter. When Ted found a very clumpy carton this weekend, his idea was to put it in the microwave to heat, then it would re-distribute itself better. After heating and stirring, he put it in the fridge. When it came out of the fridge, there was a butter disk on top! (It was half-eaten by the time I took a picture. No, I didn’t eat it.)

Now, that’s cool, right? But we have a problem. We just extracted fat from the cream. We could do a rigorous weighing and calculation to determine how much fat was removed from the container to calculate and use the “thin” cream for Nora. But instead we bought a new carton and I will drink the thin cream in my coffee this week. Everybody wins.

Lesson: Buy smooth cream if possible. If your cream is clumpy, don’t heat it. Redistribute the clumps as well as you can for reliable fat measurement.