Key Lime Ice Cream

My dad made Paula Deen’s Key Lime Ice Cream for a family party one time and it was a hit. So much so that it’s starting to become a tradition at our son’s birthday party. Since most of my family is now participating in theNext56Days, I decided to tackle this recipe and see if I could make it approved for that program. You can find the original recipe here. I had to make a couple of major changes, but the end result ended up being pretty darn close to the original.

This ice cream is a bit different from the others. I used a standard ice cream maker with ice and rock salt. The recipe below makes about a gallon of ice cream.

Ingredients

4 cups heavy whipping cream
1 2/3 cups xylitol
1 1/4 cups key lime juice
1 tablespoon lime zest
1 block Neufchatel cheese
2 cups almond milk

Directions

In a very large mixing bowl, use an electric mixer, beat 2 cups of the heavy whipping cream until it starts to thicken. Slowly add in the xylitol. You’ll see stiff peaks forming. Now you can add in the lime juice and lime zest. The mixture will thin out a bit and then you can add in the Neufchatel cheese. Finally, add in the last 2 cups of heavy whipping cream and the 2 cups of almond milk and mix thoroughly.

Transfer the mixture to the ice cream maker and follow the directions on your maker.

Right out of the ice cream freezer you’ll notice a fluffy texture. If you like a firmer, creamier texture, store in the freezer. 

We stored ours in the freezer over night and ended up with the same consistency of ice cream you get out of the grocer’s freezer section.

Not even going to guess on the calories… it’s a lot.
Makes 1 gallon

Sam’s Biscuits

All I’ve wanted on this diet is good bread and I have not been able to find anything good to use as a substitute. I’ve tried several Paleo recipes and all of them turn out too dense, too eggy, or crumble as soon as you touch them. So I’ve gone through trial and error to come up with a biscuit recipe and finally have one that I can eat that tastes like a legit biscuit. They are light and fluffy and so far we’ve had them with biscuits and gravy, egg and cheese biscuit, with tomato soup, with a deer roast, and they’re good enough to eat by themselves as a snack… which has been dangerous! They’re not as thick as a Pillsbury biscuit, but have a good consistency and delicious taste.

Ingredients

1/2 cup oat flour
1/4 cup almond flour
1/4 cup tapioca flour
1 tbsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp garlic powder (optional, but is ridiculously good)
1 tbsp unsweetened almond milk
4 heaping tsp plain Greek yogurt
1/2 stick unsalted butter melted *

*I’ve been experimenting with reducing the amount of butter and replacing with coconut oil instead. I don’t have it quite down yet, but my goal is to reduce the amount of butter in this recipe.

Directions

Pre-heat the over to 350. Mix all the dry ingredients in a bowl. Melt the butter and pour in the bowl with the dry ingredients as well as the almond milk and the yogurt. Mix everything together thoroughly. You’re not going to end up with “dough”, but you’ll have a sticky batter. I recommend using a large cookie scoop to scoop out the batter onto a pan lined with parchment paper. Bake for 12-15 minutes. I use a cake tester to make sure they have been cooked all the way through. Take out of the oven and let them cool.

Makes about 6 large biscuits.

 

Garlic Butter Sauce

I had to have garlic butter sauce with my pizza. This was pretty easy and tasted great.

Ingredients

1/2 stick of unsalted butter
1 tbsp liquid coconut oil (refined)
2 tbsp grated parmesan
1 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp garlic salt

Directions

Melt the butter and parmesan in the microwave for 30 seconds (assuming it came straight from the refrigerator). You don’t want the butter to be completely melted. Just soft enough that it can be whipped. Once it’s softened, pour into another bowl so that it doesn’t continue to melt. Add the coconut oil, garlic powder and garlic salt and stir together until the final result is creamy.

Pizza Crust

I’m a pizza addict. Since I’ve changed my diet, my biggest craving has been pizza. I’ve had a hard time with a log of the paleo crusts because they’re either too brittle, too dense, or they have a strong flavor that overpowers the pizza flavor. Until tonight! I took an existing pizza crust recipe (from offline) and modified it pretty heavily to come up with the final result. It’s just the right about of crunch while still giving the consistency of bread. It was perfect.

Ingredients

1 cup arrowroot powder
1/3 tsp salt
1/3 cup coconut flour
1 tsp garlic powder
1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese
1 tsp baking soda
1 tbsp apple cider vinegar
1 egg
1/4 cup coconut oil
1/2 stick of unsalted butter
1/3 cup water

Directions

Preheat the oven to 450. I put the pizza stone in the oven while it was preheating. Mix all of the ingredients together. I just used my hands. It’ll be really sticky at first, but eventually it’ll turn into a pretty fluffy dough. On a sheet of parchment paper, press the dough out into a round pizza. Place the parchment paper and crush onto the pizza stone and bake for 10 minutes. Take the stone out and pick up the parchment paper to flip the crust over back onto the stone and put it back in the over for another 2-3 minutes. Then take the stone out, put your toppings on and place back in the oven to cook until your toppings are to your satisfaction.

Cocktail Sauce

My father-in-law went on a fishing trip recently and came back with a LOT of fish. My wife was dying to have some cocktail sauce to eat with it, so I took the recipe here and doctored it up. My father-in-law declared it’s better than his favorite store-bought sauce.

Ingredients

1 cup Trader Joes organic ketchup
1 tsp of tabasco sauce
1.5 tsp coconut amino acid
2 tsp lemon juice
2.5 tbsp horseradish
1 tbsp xylitol

Directions

Put all of the ingredients in a blender and blend it up. I don’t like chunks or horseradish so I blended for 2-3 minutes.

Quinoa Sloppy Joes

We needed a quick meal tonight and had limited groceries to work with, so we set out to come up with a fast, easy, and creative supper. The result was a sloppy joe-like meat that was pretty tasty.

Ingredients

1/3 cup of this BBQ sauce
1/2 lb ground beef
1/3 cup cooked quinoa
1/2 small onion (chopped)
1/2 tsp garlic powder
2 tbsp water
salt & pepper

Directions

Brown the meat in a skillet. Sprinkle some salt and pepper over the meat while it cooks as well as the garlic powder. As the meat starts to brown, throw the onions in with it so that they can begin to soften. This is also the point where I added the 2 tbsp water.

Once the meat is brown, add in the BBQ sauce and quinoa and turn the burner to low. Continue cooking for 10-12 minutes or until the BBQ sauce and quinoa is warmed.

BBQ Sauce

I recently had a home-made BBQ sauce that was delicious. The best thing about it was that it’s simple to make, so I set out to find a way to make it “approved”. So far we’ve used this sauce to make BBQ meatballs, quinoa sloppy joes, and BBQ chicken and none of them disappointed!

Ingredients

1 cup of ketchup
2 tbsp xylitol
1 tsp coconut amino acids
1 tsp Badia Jerk Seasoning
1 tsp Badia Holy Smoke
1 tsp apple cider vinegar
1/2 tsp black pepper
1/4 tsp ground mustard
1 tbsp prepared mustard

Directions

Whisk all ingredients together in a stove-ready pot. Simmer on medium for 5 minutes while stirring constantly. The longer the sauce simmers, the thicker it will get.

Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

I’m the kind of guy that likes to get a cookie out of a cookie jar for a snack. I tried a dozen different recipes to come up with an edible cookie and failed with all but the last one. I found the recipe for a vegan, gluten free chocolate chip cookie here and modified it to fit my diet.

Ingredients

1 cup of old fashioned oats
1 cup of oat flour
1/2 tsp of baking powder
1/2 tsp of baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup of xylitol
6 tbsp solid coconut oil
2 eggs
1 tsp maple flavoring
1 tsp vanilla flavoring
3/4 cup of approved chocolate chips

Directions

Preheat the oven to 350. Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper.
Mix all of the dry ingredients together and then add in the eggs, flavorings, and coconut oil and mix with a hand mixer.

Spoon out the dough and line them on the parchment paper. I put about 2 inches between each cookie (the dough does melt some) so that they don’t run together.

Put the cookies in the oven for about 12 minutes.

Berries and Cream Ice Cream

Berries and Cream

This is probably the easiest ice cream I’ve made so far. Just throw everything in the food processor and then throw it in the ice cream maker. It’s also my favorite when it comes to flavor. It reminds me of eating cheesecake with berries. So good! And the best part, there’s no added sugar!

For all of my ice creams, I use a small ice cream maker that can be found on Amazon here. You’ll need to put the empty ice cream container in the freezer 15 hours before you make the ice cream so it’s good an frozen. I like ice cream so much that when I finish one batch, I clean the container out and put it back in the freezer so it’s ready for the next batch!

Ingredients

2 cups cashew milk
8 ounces cream cheese
1 tbsp butter
1 cup xylitol
1 tbsp vanilla extract
6 frozen strawberries
1/4 cup frozen blueberries

Directions

Put all of the ingredients in a food processor and blend on high for 4 minutes or until all of the berries have been sufficiently mulched up.

Once mixed, add the mixture to the ice cream maker and churn for 30 minutes.

After ice cream is formed, you can eat immediately, or if you prefer a firmer ice cream, you can put it in the freezer for a couple of hours.

About 200 calories per .5 cup
Makes 1 1/2 quarts

Spaghetti Sauce

We used to use a jar of Prego Spaghetti sauce for almost all of our Italian recipes. Those sauces have too much sugar, so this is the sauce we use instead. We’ve used it on baked chicken and million-dollar spaghetti squash so far and it has been a hit!

Ingredients:
3 garlic cloves
1 small onion
1/4 green bell pepper
1 tsp oat flour
2 tbsp coconut oil
2 tsp oregano
1 tbsp xylitol
1 tsp basil
1/4 tsp pepper
1 bay leaf
1/2 tsp Italian seasoning
2 can tomato sauce

*If you use low sodium tomato sauce, you may need to add salt to taste. This recipe was based on tomato sauce that already had salt added.

Directions:
Put the garlic, onion, and bell pepper in a chopper and chop them up fine.
On medium heat, put coconut oil in a sauce pan with the chopped up vegetables. Cook the vegetables until they become mushy and add in the oat flour to make a paste.

Turn the heat on low and add in two cans of tomatoes. Add in the additional spices. Cook on low for 30-40 minutes making sure to stir regularly so the sauce doesn’t burn. Some of the water will cook off and the sauce will start to thicken and will become less bitter as it cooks.

Makes about 2 cups of sauce