LOW-CARB BROWNIES THAT DON'T TASTE LOW-CARB!

Brownies: does this even look low-carb to you? no way!

I have certainly been eating well since going low-carb. No, I didn't eat the whole batch of brownies yet! I'm pacing myself. It's kind of easy to eat 3 or 4 though because they're very good. So, you're wise to stash them in the refrigerator out of sight and even wiser yet to cut them small. That being said, the recipe makes 48 brownies in a 13 x 9 inch baking pan and each brownie has a pretty low carb count. (Per brownie: Effective carbohydrates: 1.5 g; Carbohydrates: 2.1 g; Fiber: 0.6 g; Protein: 2.1 g; Fat: 9.7 g; Calories: 99 Made with Splenda only: Add 0.3 g carbohydrates)


Karen Barnaby outdid herself with this winner of a recipe. In place of white flour, the recipe calls for ground almonds and it incorporates quality unsweetened dark chocolate and cocoa powder. The moistness of the brownies has much to do with the cream cheese and unsalted butter in there. It makes a nice-sized batch for nibbling on when you crave chocolate or sweets (just cut them small!) and their richness helps alleviate hunger pangs. The ground almonds help with that too. That extra protein helps stave off further munchies.
Go buy her book for the recipe. She's already shared so many of her recipes from her book that it's only right that you buy her book The Low-Carb Gourmet for this one :P

More about → LOW-CARB BROWNIES THAT DON'T TASTE LOW-CARB!

Banana Blueberry Jam

Here's my second jar of homemade jam. This time it's jamming banana with blueberries :)

I have written quite a fair bit about the homemade jam recipes from a cookbook in my last post on jam making. Hence, I will just go straight into this recipe.

I bought some blueberries which were on sale several months back. I have since learned how to freeze them for later use by following the instructions here. The only thing I do differently is, I do not wash the blueberries before freezing them, as I guess they have already been pre-washed and packed into punnets for sale here.

I thawed the frozen berries and gave them a light rinse before crushing them lightly with a fork. With the same fork, I mashed up the banana, and mix it with the berries, sugar and some lemon juice. I like how easy it is to make this delicious jam. Not only there is little preparation required and it could be done with only a few kitchen utensils. The cooking time is also quite short, all you need is to bring the mixture to a boil and let it continue to boil for another 5 ~10 minutes.



The finished jam was only able to fill up a 1 cup empty jam jar. I thought the amount is just right for our family, since I have not formed the habit of stocking up jars of jam in my cupboards.



This homemade sweet jam tastes as good as my favourite store bought blueberry jam, minus whatever preservatives that you get from ready made ones. I like the presence of the chunks of berries, although like most jam it tasted a tad too sweet for me. Don't ask me about the banana, I think it is added mainly for its higher pectin level...which helps to thicken and set the jam, since no pectin is used in this recipe. Incidentally, pectin content in bananas is water-absorbent which helps create the necessary bulk in easing constipation;)

Besides spreading it over a plain slice of bread, this jam is so versatile that I have also thought of other delicious ways to use it. I have since made a banana blueberry chiffon cake, and I really think the jam would do good to a batch of muffins, and I hope I have time to make some Jammie Dodgers soon!



Banana Blueberry Jam

Ingredient
(yields about 1 cup of jam)

100g bananas (1 large very riped), mashed
200g frozen blueberries, thaw
230g granulated sugar*
juice from 1/2 a lemon

Method:

1. Rinse and thaw frozen berries. With a fork, crush the berries so that some berries are mushed up leaving others only lightly crushed.
2. Place mashed bananas, lemon juice, sugar and blueberries in a pot or a large saucepan. Mix well.
3. On medium heat, stirring constantly with a heat-proof spatula or a wooden spoon, bring the mixture to a full rolling boil (where the bubbles do not stop or lessen when you stir it). Once the mixture starts to boil, skim away any excessive foams or bubbles, stirring constantly all the time.
4. Keep at a rolling boil for another 5 mins, stirring constantly till the mixture thickens, becomes clearer and transparent (no more foams). The entire cooking time should be around 10 ~ 15 mins.
5. Remove from heat. The jam will be a little runny when hot but the consistency will be just right after it has cool off.
6. Ladle hot jam into hot sterilised jars leaving a gap of about 1~2cm from the top. (Since I do not have an appropriate ladle or funnel, I poured the jam into my measuring cup before filling the jars. The sprout on the cup helps easy and clean filling.) Secure lids. Let cool. Jam will keep up to 3 months if stored in fridge or in a cool, dark cupboard. Once opened, store in fridge and best consumed within 3~ 4 weeks.
   
   Recipe source: adapted from 鲜美果酱轻松做! by Romi Igarashi

Note: *Do not reduce the sugar, as the amount is required to preserve the jam.

More about → Banana Blueberry Jam

Baby Do's. Puffy Braid

Well, somedays you take what you can get on pictures. This one is a standby that I use on my babies while their fronts and sides are growing in.

More about → Baby Do's. Puffy Braid

MINI HONEY MANDARINS

mini honey mandarins: intensely sweet and full of flavour!a mini honey mandarin can be as small as a quarter (that's one of the new Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics quarters there) up to about the size of a Loonie ($1 coin)

At local Asian markets, the Mini Honey Mandarins (a.k.a. Sugar Mandarins, Mini Mandarins, Mini Sweet Mandarins) are here. While at Aberdeen Mall, I purchased a huge bag of these little sugar bombs for the kids because they love them! They are just as easy to peel as the regular Japanese mandarins, but are so small that you can fit 4 or 5 in your hand. The kids love them just because they're tiny, cute and super-sweet.

I saw them again at Kin's Market for $1.29/lb and bought a gargantuan bag. These were even tinier than the ones I purchased at the Aberdeen market, but not as sweet. In my own experience, I have found that the darker orange the little Sugar Mandarins, the more intensely sweet and full of orangey-flavour they are. Size has nothing to do with sweetness, I guess.

because they're so small, you can easily eat a dozen at a sitting.

Mini Honey Mandarins make for fantastic snacks and are perfect for kids' lunch bags. My kindergartener can eat 3 for a snack at school and has at one time eaten 8 at one sitting. My 2 year old, who has a heartier appetite can eat about the same as her big sister! I'm limiting myself to 1 a day because I'm watching my sugar intake !

More about → MINI HONEY MANDARINS

LOW-CARB MILK TEA JELLY

Milk Tea Jelly: a low-carb dessert that is delicate and refreshing
I have had Karen Barnaby's cookbook, The Low-Carb Gourmet for quite a while. In the past, when I've low-carbed my way out of a few pounds, I have sought out her recipes because they're actually delicious-sounding as well as actually delicious. Barnaby is a local chef in Vancouver (she's executive chef at The Fish House in Stanley Park). She has published other cookbooks (that aren't low-carb) and she is active in a low-carb forum as she's an expert in making restaurant-worthy gourmet food for low-carbers. When you make one of her low-carb recipes, you don't actually feel as if you're on a diet. She indicates in the introduction to The Low-Carb Gourmet that she herself had lost 70 pounds and improved her blood pressure and cholesterol levels eating this way.


Barnaby is a fantastic wealth of information and she's a nice lady too. I met her a while back and the copy I purchased is signed by her too. There's nothing better than eating well and not feeling deprived. You certainly feel pampered making some of her gourmet dishes. I haven't been disappointed by any of the recipes yet. I highly recommend her book if you're a foodie trying to eat more healthy low-carb meals. If you want to check out all her low carb recipes, you can find them here. As you can see, she's shared many of the recipes from the 250 that are in her cookbook.

Some of the recipes that I particularly enjoyed were the "Deep-dish Pizza Quiche", "Salmon with Bacon, Tomato and Caper Vinaigrette", "Clams Steamed with Bacon, Green Olives, and Tomatoes", "Stir-fried Prawns with Tomato Coconut Cream","My Brownies", "New York Cheesecake" "Cream Cheese, Coconut and lemon mounds" and "Stained Glass Window Cake".

I was at Kin's Market today and purchased eggplants so I can make her Spicy Roasted and Mashed Eggplant (bharta) this weekend. I also intend to try the Cauli-flied rice and Scalloped Savoy Cabbage. My favourite section to read is her Little Nibbles and Dips section because I'm a grazer and having pre-made low-carb snacks in the fridge is so helpful so I don't reach out for chips or sugar-laced foods.

For this post, I used Barnaby's Coffee Jelly recipe and adapted it to my tastes. I'm a tea-drinker so I used really supersonic dark tea. In those HK cafes around town, they use orange pekoe tea bags and boil the heck out of it, creating this almost thick, dark amber liquid that is so strong it rivals black coffee. It comes with the milk (I suspect powdered creamer or canned evaporated milk) mixed into it already and all you do is add sugar to your liking. To make my Milk Tea Jelly I used Red Rose orange pekoe tea bags (4 in total) and steeped them in the hot water, squeezing the bags out until they rendered all they tannin-laced juices. I like my jelly stiffer than usual so I increased the gelatine a bit too. Using Splenda adds a slight sweetness to the jelly. I made one little custard cup full of the plain jelly without the cream and when it was set, cubed it to sprinkle on the Milk Tea Jelly.

The Milk Tea Jelly was so refreshing. It was light-tasting and would make a lovely dessert even if you weren't low-carbing.

*****update February 8, 2009******

Well, just 'cause Evelyn asked, here's my recipe--an adaptation of the recipe Barnaby created using coffee. I prefer tea of course. I believe any tea will do, but to be authentic Hong Kong Cafe Milk Tea, it's got to be Orange Pekoe tea bags. Red Rose brand is far superior in flavour and for some reason, I heard it's only available in Canada :P

Milk Tea Jelly

3-4 Tbsp. water [or enough to soften the gelatin]
4 tsp. gelatin
2 cups water
1/4 cup Splenda
4 orange pekoe tea bags (preferably Red Rose brand)
1/2 cup whipping cream
optional whipped cream for garnishing

1. Place the 3 Tbsp. water in a small bowl and sprinkle the gelatin over the surface. Let stand until the gelatin softens.
2. Heat 2 cups water in a small saucepan. Heat the water until boiling and turn off the heat. Add the 4 tea bags and allow to steep until extremely dark (from 5-10 minutes). Press the bags with the back of a spoon. Remove tea bags and discard.
3. Add soaked gelatin and stir until it dissolves. Add the Splenda to the tea mixture. Stir well.
4. Measure out 3/4 cup of the tea mixture into a small bowl. Add the cream to the remaining mixture. Stir well and pour into 4 small dessert dishes. Place both mixtures into the fridge to chill for at least 4 hours.
5. Remove the plain jelly from the bowl and cut into 1/2-inch cubes and pile onto the jelly in the dishes. Garnish with more whipped cream if you like and a coffee bean or two.
   Total Carbohydrates: 8.17
   Carbohydrates per Serving: 2.04

More about → LOW-CARB MILK TEA JELLY

Hearts take two

No tutorial on this one, I wasn't sure if it would turn out the way I wanted it to. There are a few things I would change. That first ponytail that is in a triangle? I would put the ponytail down as far as I could. The two on either side, I would bring forward towards her face. It will give it more of a definitive heart shape.

Instructions are simple. Start with the top ponytail and split it in two. Add each part to a consecutive ponytail on either side and follow the elastics into a heart shape to the end.

Without a ribbon...


...and with.

More about → Hearts take two

Hearts take one

In honor of Valentines Day and for something fun to do, we are going to do some "hair hearts".

First, start out with a ponytail from the part to the ear. Then tie a ribbon around the elastic. After I did this, I realized it was a waste of time because it fell out and I had to retie it. Forget what I said, just do the ponytail.

Then, flip the hair in a knot. Not one so the hair goes back on the head, but forward so it defies nature or gravity or something.

THEN tie the ribbon on. I promise, it's easier this way.

Now, split the ponytail in two and coat each side with gel or pomade and wrap the ribbon around like so (you want to make sure your ribbon is loooonnngggg. You want the ribbon to come up UNDER the sides...you will see why later. Wrap the ribbon around as far down as you can and secure with an elastic.

Now, ignore those for a minute. Part the rest of the hair in half and pull each side into a ponytail. The one underneath your ribbon wrapped hair, leave down, the one on the other side, only pull halfway through the last time you pull it through the elastic.

Now, have another elastic ready. Pull the two ribbon wrapped pieces into a heart with the bottom on the ponytail. Like so.

Secure them to the ponytail with an elastic. I didn't bother taking the elastics off the end of the wrapped peices. Who knows if the elastics would pop at dance class? I don't want to take any chances and I REALLY don't want to have to re-wrap her hair.

Make sure on that last pull through, you only pull it through half-way.

Tie the ends of your ribbon around the elastic and into a bow, and then tie another ribbon around the elastic on the other side

Like so.

Now curl those ends under and fluff them.

Voila...a heart! Can you see the reason the ribbon needed to go the way it did? It holds the curves on the top of the heart.

More about → Hearts take one