Muffins! (1st attempt)

I have been waiting around to find a great muffin recipe for a long time. I like to use ingredients I always have on hand for my recipes. Premade mixes are great, but you never know when your little one will chant, "muffins, muffins". To stop the chanting, I decided to try my hand at making them. If my daughter didn't like them, I suppose I would at least have the benefit of never hearing that muffin chant again! So without further ado, muffins, muffins, muffins!

Ingredients:

1 Cup Low Protein Baking Mix ( I use the recipe from Cook for Love)

3 Tblsps sugar (or more)

2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

1/4 tsp salt

3 Tblsp canola oil

2 Tblsp water (or a little more)

140 grams fruit (I used 70 grams each of banana and raspberries)

spices

I started by portioning out the fruit and mashing them up. To the banana I added 1/4 tsp cinnamon and 2 Tblsp sugar. In the raspberry bowl, I added 1/8 tsp cardamon and extra sugar. The raspberries needed more help to sweeten them up. There are a lot of other spices that go great with raspberries, but after smelling some of them, my daughter did not want anything else but the cardamon.

Next I mixed up all of the dry ingredients, but not before my son stopped to show me this:



This is a lego microwave. There is a drumstick inside.



Anyway, you can see the mashed up fruit and the dry mix here. I also divided the vanilla, canola, and water in half and added to each of the fruit bowls. If you were making only one kind of muffin, you could add it all into the one mix. This was my first time making them, so I wanted to try two different flavors.

Next, I added 1/2 of the dry mixture to each fruit bowl and mixed.

Raspberry mix.

Banana mix.

Then, I had to take a break to take a picture of my daughter in her "chef's clothes". I suppose that is her chef's pose also. At this point I was wondering if the kids would ever let me get the muffins in the oven!

I coated the muffin pans with canola oil and put them in without papers. The test muffin I baked ended up with 1/3 of the muffin stuck to the paper.

The raspberries came out this neat blue color. It looked horrible after I mixed it with the baking mix. It was this icky grey color.

I baked them in a 400 degree oven for about 15 minutes.

Here they are! My kids both liked them. They didn't rise very much at all, so I am wondering if I should try adding some xanthum gum next time. Anyway, they were well worth the effort of trying. They were gone in two days.

The banana muffins turned out to be 18mg phe per muffin and the raspberry were 16mg phe per muffin.

If you use the recipe and want to use a different fruit and spice combination, everything expect fruit and spice is 89.9mg phe for the recipe.

Take care and enjoy!

~Michele

Cook For Love's Banana Bread

Oma (grandma) made this bread from Cook For Love's website so I don't have "in the making" pictures. Cook For Love has the instructions and even a video on how to make it. 

Isn't gorgeous? Only 27mg phe a slice.

My son really likes it too. I don't think he believes it is Low Phe. I'll have to find a similiar recipe for him since I don't want him eating all of his sister's bread.

Make it. You WILL enjoy it!
-Michele

Bread Machine Low Phe Bread

In our house I make about one loaf of bread a week. This bread recipe is great because it is sturdy enough to cut easily and use for bread pizza. It is adapted from the Apples to Zucchini cookbook by Virginia Schuett. Virginia's recipe calls for Wel-Plan baking mix. Although I followed the recipe in the beginning, I soon realized I only used the Wel-Plan for this bread. I switched to an all wheat starch base and added xanthum gum. The result is a really nice bread that is VERY low in Phe.

My machine

Ingredients:
300g Wheat Starch ( I get mine from Taste Connections)
1/4 teaspoon xanthum gum
3 tablespoons Metamucil (original flavor)
2 tablespoons Coffee-Mate (original flavor)
1 tablespoon sugar
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoons of yeast
290g water (optional: mixed with 1 tablespoon of molasses for color)

Toss it into the bread machine. I add the ingredients as listed and then start while I add the water. Remember to scrape down the sides!

This is what you end up with. I did not add molassas to this loaf and I have to admit it's not the best of the many I have made. For some reason it didn't rise as much as the others usually do. Anyway, it still tastes great and my little girl loves it! 

I slice the loaf in half and then into slices. Phe is about 9mg per slice for 16 slices.

Enjoy!
-Michele

Ahh Summer!

Can't go wrong with 0.16mg of Phe per gram! Yum!
-Michele

Popped Tapioca

My son and I made popped tapioca for the first time.

I left the tapioca too long in the popper, because it started to tan a bit.

We sprinkled the popped tapioca with taco seasoning, but none of it stuck to the tapioca. I think I might try Molly McButter next time.

Both kids have nibbled here and there, but I think the bland flavor is keeping them away. If I can get the flavor right, this is a great 0 Phe snack.

Does anyone have a great flavoring for popped tapioca?

take care - Michele

Low Phe Eggs & Bacon Breakfast

This morning I made eggs and toast for breakfast. Sometimes it's tough to make two meals at once. Hopefully this will help you out a bit.

First I started with the ingredients:

1 - serving Cook For Love "Eggcellent Breakfast" mix (plus regular eggs)

4g - Taste Connections "Bacon Bits"

1/2 tsp - Walden Farms Peanut Butter

1/2 tsp - Smucker's preserves

60g - Rice Milk

1 - slice Low Protein Bread (plus regular bread)

Directions:

1. Place regular bread and low protein bread in toaster (do not cook yet).

2. Cook regular eggs.

3. Mix up a serving of the CFL egg mix. This is what it looks like.

4. Place regular eggs in microwave safe bowl and into microwave.

5. Cook CFL egg mix.

6. Toast bread.

7. Top toast with favorite topping (preserves or peanut butter).

8. Microwave regular eggs and plate.

9. Plate CFL eggs and serve.

34mg Phe for this plate. You can see my daughter grabbing some bacon bits as I snapped the pic.

take care

-Michele

Quick Tomato Soup for Everyone

This is a great quick lunch that everyone can eat.

Ingredients:
1 - can Campbell's Tomato Soup (prepared with water)
1 - sliced cucumber
Hidden Valley Ranch Light Dressing
1 - slice low protein bread (regular bread for others)

Directions:
1. Cook soup according to directions.
2. Toast bread and allow to set aside.
3. Slice cucumber and place on plates. Pour HV ranch over top.
4. Slice bread into strips and then into cubes.
5. Place soup into bowls and drop "croutons" in.

Serving:
1 Cup soup
1/4 Cup cucumber slices
2 Tblsp dressing
= 78mg phe

*I didn't include the bread in the total because it varies so much.