[recipe] Cranberry Muffins

I am so mad at Dave right now.  He asked me to make him cranberry muffins for breakfast with this recipe I found.  The bater was orgasmically good and the muffins are just taunting me.  Do I break keto?  Do I give a flying rat's ass?  THEY SMELL SO GOOD INTERROBANG

Also, I'm fat, and I have to be half naked in a play in four weeks...

[recipe] SF Keto Flax Brownies

I've been playing around with this recipe for Miracle Brownies a few times to completely different results.  They are good, and pretty easy to make.

FIRST ITERATION

When reading the recipe, I realized it asked for three full cups of sweetener, one cup liquid, one stick butter, four eggs, and two cups flax meal.  I was horrified by this amount of sweetener, so I only used one cup of erythritol with some baking splenda mixed in.  Dan loved them, but I couldn't get past how sweet they still were, and the texture of the flax meal reminded me a lot of wheat bran or corn hulls.

SECOND ITERATION

Like most weekends, I woke up wanting to bake something at random, and Dan requested flax brownies again.  We were out or low in a few ingredients, so I substituted.  I only used 1/4 C erythritol total, used extra cocoa powder instead of baker's chocolate, and subbed the last half cup of flax meal with a mixture of hemp and coconut flour.  I frekin loved these!  They had the same texture as the carbomb cupcakes I'd made the week before for Isilza, though a bit dry.  I want to make them like this again but add more cream next time.  There was one tray of mini cupcakes (15 minutes) and one of big cupcakes (20 minutes).  Dan found them not sweet enough.

THIRD ITERATION

This morning followed the same procedure.  This time I had all the ingredients, but the stove was in the dishwasher, so I had to add the baker's chocolate shaved instead of melted.  I upped the sweetener to 1/4 C erythritol and 1/4 C baking splenda, which was a good level of sweet.  Again in one tray of minis and one tray of regular cupcakes, but something made them really fluff up!  Dan loved them and deemed them the best batch.  I didn't like them nearly as much as last month's because they had the hully texture again, but it got better after they cooled.  A lot more fluffy like cake than moist and chewy like a brownie.  There's a bit of tinny aftertaste from the sweetener.

MY IDEAL NEXT ITERATION

I want to keep the sweetener from batch 3, but the solids from batch 2.  Maybe do 1.5 parts cocoa powder and 0.5 parts baker's chocolate, and twice as much cream.

Cutting Time

So I tried to do paleo last month and it was a complete failure.  The lines were so blurry that I really can't justify not eating ice cream.  So I basically took the month off and ate anything I wanted.  But now that March has started, I have gone into a cutting phase.  

And let me tell you one thing, it sucks!  But desperate times call for desperate measures.

Dan found this Keto Calculator which helps you know how much you need of what macro nutrient depending on your weight, exercise level, and goals.  This is where I stood March 1st:

32/F/5'10" | CW 162.6 | 22.2% BF | moderate exercise

* 1363 kcal Goal (1362 min, 2374 max)

* 10g Carbohydrates

* 120g Protein (81g min, 158g max)

* 94-206g Fat

I've been trying to get 1400 kcals on days I don't do exercise, with the option to eat a few hundred more when I skate (there's a whole 1000 kcal window).  I weighed in at 158.8 this morning, almost four pounds less than four days ago, but I atribute them to debloating after getting off carbs.

My intention is to follow this through April and the end of the play, then alternating with bulking every six weeks after that.  If I don't finally lose that ponch after this, I will be very, very furious.