Low Carb Chocolate Treats and Desserts

I'm trying to cut back on my daily carbs....and my one big weakness is chocolate. I want something Gluten-free as well as Low Carb.
Calories are not really a concern.
No peanut butter in the recipes, please.....and sugar alcohols should be avoided.....erythritol, Swerve and stevia are the preferred sweeteners.
And, prefer non-baking recipes....but sometimes you have to bite the bullet and turn on the oven !!!

I found this Chocolate Almond Bark recipe, and I am wondering if I can subst coconut oil for the cocoa butter?
alldayidreamaboutfood.com...

Here's more ideas
www.lowcarbfriends.com...

Please feel free to add your recipes and ideas.
Even if you don't limit your carbs, it's a good idea to cut back on sugar

Just to offer a bit of advice. Carbs aren't a bad thing. Fiber, for instance, is listed under carbs.

Carbohydrates are a source of energy and used to fuel cells such as those of the brain and muscles. Taking carbs away isn't good.

However, Sugar -which is a short-chain, soluble carbohydrate (oligosaccharides) that you definitely do want to regulate- is something you should be considering. If you want low-sugar treats, that's fantastic! But 'cutting carbs' is not healthy.

Complex, long-chain carbohydrates (polysaccharides) are the carbs you should be consuming.

Something with high fiber content will have these complex carbs. For instance, I have a very high fiber, no sugar cereal called "Shredded Wheat & Bran" each cup has 12% of my daily carbs, yet all those carbs are complex carbs (fibre) and 0 are from sugar.

I even add another 12% of my daily carbs with 1/2 cup of Five grain Granola with sliced almonds leaving each bowl with 24% of my daily (recommended) intake of carbs, 48% of my fibre, and a whopping 74g of carbs. And I have 10% body fat.

Bruce Lee ate a very carb-rich diet, and he likely had 4-5% bodyfat.

The more you know

a reply to: Ghost147

Yeah, that is true.
But for me....carbs are not a good thing for me unless they are vegetables and nuts....and I cannot eat wheat.

a reply to: Ghost147
Lowering the intake of carbs is the FIRST thing you learn in Diabetic Control Class. Everything you eat (and sometimes drink) is a carbohydrate. That is what your body uses for energy. It is all broken down. The key is , the type of carbs you are intaking.

Macronutrients are a large topic but I wouldn't compare yourself to world-class athletes for intake unless you have their metabolism and exercise like they do. The carbs eaten by many athletes would change the rest of us into beach balls.

gluten-free goddess has a blog that is usually no-sugar as well. lowcarber.org has a forum with a kitchen board. You can usually google and find tons of recipes for whatever you're looking for.

Honestly when it comes to grains or 'sweet' though I found that avoiding them utterly for a few weeks was the best thing as it really helped get past some of the gnawing want for them. If you eat plenty of healthy fats and proteins you're definitely not hungry.

You can eat low and lower-carb without being ketogenic (the extremely LC first couple weeks on Atkins for example), just reducing sugars (and for most people like me, grains) is a good thing. Developing a huge love for huge salads with as many things as possible in them, and some kind of meat, and some fat-based dressing, and intermittant fasting (slow to start) has been great for most the people I know who've gone that route.

As for LC quickies, I recommend the bowl muffin or cup. Basically you combine an egg, some softened cream cheese (1-2 oz), any spices you want (from cocoa to cinnamon to whatever, sweetener if you wish), and sometimes a teaspoon or two of any kind of LC meal (like coconut or almond meal, just a tiny bit), stir it and nuke it for a bit. It ranges from a bread pudding texture to a muffin depending on how you make it -- this is a concept recipe hence lack of detail measures -- and you can put things 'in' it (e.g. a few berries if it's sweet, for say, a raspberry cream cheese breakfast munch).

You can also make them savory (chicken and rosemary?) or salty (chopped pepperoni and some shred mozz cheese and italian seasoning?). Really the bottom line here is that egg and cream cheese along with some flavorings and a tiny bit of bulk meal will make something akin to bread-ish (variations on this are used for everything from pizza crust and crackers to you name it). If you have quality cocoa and sweetener (or some quality dark chocolate to melt) you can certainly make a variety of chocolate versions of them.

You can find about 1000 variations on this at the lowcarber.org kitchen dessert board under terms like 'bowl muffin' and 'mock danish' for example.

I did LC (successfully) for some time and in the end the most useful thing I found was what amounted to bulk cooking, or prepping. Making taco meat and shredded baked chicken, shredded cheese and sliced peppers and sometimes prepped veggies for salad or stir-fry, keeping all that in the fridge and then just dumping little baggies or handfulls of prepped food into a bowl or pan to make something through the week. If cream cheese is often used, divide it into the portion sizes you normally use and keep a little on the counter so it's soft and the rest in the fridge, to just take one out. Make burger patties ahead of time. Sautee tons of mushrooms-onions-peppers at once and save in a few baggies, then later cook your burger, dump in one of the sautee bags near the end and you have a great simple meal. Drop veggies and cheese on a plate of chicken or meat for chipless nachos or chicken and veggies and little cubes of cheese into a bowl for a big salad (homemade bluecheese is the bomb for dressing). It made eating faster and easier and healthier. Radically changing one's food base (esp. in today's world) is hard and the point where failure intervenes is usually when one is hungry and nothing is near-instantly available.

Eating the things that are inherently high-carb though, including very sweet things no matter what sweetener you choose (note: d-Ribose is actually quite good for you, though not as sweet as regular sugar), tends to just keep your taste buds wanting that. But I'm not judging, maybe you are not doing that, sometimes people just want a dessert! Good luck with the plan.

RC

a reply to: DontTreadOnMe

i don think its the chocolate you should be concerned about are carbs- i would stay away from Dairy if you looking to loose weight .

a reply to: DontTreadOnMe

I've been eating a mostly veggie keto diet for a while now (diabetes and cancer both run strong in my family, and I'm trying to head 'em off at the pass). My experience with cutting down to 20< carbs a day has been overwhelmingly positive. It took a couple of weeks to adapt, but then my energy skyrocketed, my endurance improved, my lean muscle mass increased, and my brain sharpened up.

One of the most challenging things for me was letting go of chocolate... until I found out I didn't have to! If fat isn't a concern, this place has some wonderful gluten/sugar free chocolate treat recipes. I use liquid stevia, it works great. Powdered does as well, I've just come to prefer the liquid form.

www.ruled.me...

Good luck!

a reply to: RedCairo

Thanks for the site names and tips.....I seem to remember the egg/cream cheese thing from doing LC many years ago....that can certainly be ad libbed to make a dessert.

I have carb cravings....but they are mostly tied to savory things like potato chips or macaroni and cheese.
They have lessened since I have been diagnosed as having an intolerance to gluten....wheat is highly addictive.

We do desserts in our house for dinner...nothing extravagant.

Must check out d-Ribose...thanks.

a reply to: Spookytraction

Thanks!!!!
That site looks fabulous!
Lots of interesting things to maybe try.

My husband cannot eat corn, and should avoid yeast....so we are looking for alternatives

a reply to: DontTreadOnMe

Awesome! There's the perception that this kind of diet is restrictive, and it's absolutely not. Especially if you get creative and have fun with it. I wish you guys the best.

a reply to: Spookytraction

I know it's not restrictive, but i have gotten bored with it in the past.
And thanks!

more recipes I found
www.instructables.com...
recipes.sparkpeople.com...
www.cdkitchen.com...
lowcarbyum.com...

a reply to: DontTreadOnMe

Cocoa butter is a unique item that you can't sub.

Im gonna read through, then add some recipes in a little bit.

a reply to: Ghost147

Ketosis. Thats the key word here.

Carbs create insulin response, which is what is trying to be controlled. You keep insulin response low enough, the body goes into ketosis and begins shedding fat like crazy.

Some peoples bodies are not meant to take in the grains we started eating 7k years ago. We don't process the energy source efficiently, creating unnecessary hunger and storing unnecessary reserves (i.e., fat).

Side note: when you talk about "cutting carbs", you actually mean "net carbs", which adjusts fiber based carbs out of the count (as fiber does not create an insulin response)
ETA: sugar alcohols are another good topic on insulin response. Typically you adjust out sugar alchohol carbs. But you shouldn't, as they still generate insulin response. In the case of Maltitol and Xylitol, the response is actually netting at a greater level than with sugar.

Erythritol (stevia) is a sugar alcohol that carries only about 2.2% of the insulin response of sugar. So its what low carb eaters tend to gravitate towards, along with splenda (and rarely ogiliofructose, a sweet fiber)

a reply to: bigfatfurrytexan

damn.....I was afraid of that!

There's always ganache. A simple mix would be something like:

-heat 1 cup heavy cream to simmer for about 2 minutes, stirring to keep from lumping on the edges
- throw in 1 tbsp butter and melt
- add 1 tsp vanilla
- break 1/2 to 1 square 100% cacao Ghirardelli into small pieces and throw in, then turn off the heat
- let sit for a minute or two to melt the chocolate, then stir
- sweeten to taste, turn back onto low heat for a minute or two if you need to get it warmed again to make the chocolate homogenized into the mixture

Ill sometimes make truffles (scoop a small amount and cover in almond flour or coconut). Ill make peanut butter and ganache cups using these little silicone cups I have (just put the peanut butter in the microwave to heat, add a bit of sweetener and almond flour, then put into half of the bottom of the cup, chill, and put the ganache on the other half).

Chocolate cookies using an egg merengue to make the mix fluffy...ill have to look up the recipe and post. But you put some sugar free raspberry jam in the middle, like a thumbprint cookie. Ill be back with that one.

a reply to: DontTreadOnMe

I love chocolate but can't eat it after mid-day or I will have trouble
sleeping that night.I like sugar free jello with fresh fruit.I know that
it isn't low- carb but it taste's good.
I tried that low-carb diet a few years ago.I did lose 30 pounds but it was
a struggle because my husband has to have italian food at least once
a week.Plus,I craved bananas like you wouldn't believe.I also gained
back one pound per banana I ate.
My weakness is cookies and cakes.If I find any low-carb desserts,I will
post them for you.

a reply to: DontTreadOnMe

I make hot chocolate for my husband once in awhile.I use
that unsweetened baking chocolate,stevia and milk.

a reply to: bigfatfurrytexan

I forgot about ganache!!
For a cup of cream, you only need that little bit of chocolate??
Thanks for that...and I look forward to the meringue recipe.

a reply to: mamabeth

Bananas are really dangerous to low carb diets.....trust me....I found that out....high sugar content...so quite a bit of carbs, even for a small banana.... a small banana has 21 net carbs.

And in that vein....a wonderful sounding chocolate pie!
Sounds decadent...looks easy.
Chocolate Ganache Tart with Macaroon Crust