I used the heck out of Pinterest when I first started on keto. It’s a treasure trove of recipes for all skill levels. If you’re just starting out on your keto adventure, I highly recommend following your favorite keto and low-carb cooking blogs on there, and setting up Keto boards for yourself so you can organize your recipes. I have my categories set up very similarly to how I have them on this site, by primary ingredient. I even have a board called “Keto Tried and True” where I save the recipes I’ve tried and liked. It’s great for when I’m lacking creativity and just want to put something on the table.
How does this have anything to do with this recipe, you might ask? Well, if you’re searching for keto recipes on Pinterest, you’re almost guaranteed to find a recipe involving Fathead dough. And for good reason. It started out as a pizza dough, but you can find recipes using it that run the gamut from danishes to bagels to dinner rolls. A personal favorite of mine are these sausage-stuffed biscuits. Fathead dough is made of four basic ingredients: mozzarella cheese, cream cheese, almond flour, and eggs. Everyone has a different recipe for it, but I used this one, minus the garlic powder because I wanted a more neutral taste.
You’ll be doing a lot of things at once in this recipe, so put your multitasking hat on. First, put down three slices of bacon to cook. While that’s cooking, work on your fathead dough. Preheat your oven to 425 degrees. Put a cup and a half of shredded mozzarella and an ounce of cream cheese into a microwaveable bowl, then microwave it on high for 30 seconds at a time, stirring afterwards. What you’re looking for is the cheese to melt to the point where the cream cheese incorporates entirely into the mozzarella. In my microwave, this takes about a minute and 20 seconds. At that point, add 3/4 cup of almond flour and stir it in with a wooden spoon. If it won’t incorporate well, knead it a bit, but expect it to be sticky. Once the flour is all blended in, add a beaten egg and stir or knead until you don’t see any clumps of egg in the dough. Divide the dough into six equal balls. You can either roll the balls out into 4-5″ rounds between two slices of parchment paper, or do what I did and press them out into rustic-looking circles. Put them on a sheet pan lined with parchment paper and bake at 425 for 7 minutes, then remove.
The sauce is just a variation of my sawmill gravy recipe, made a bit thicker and on a smaller scale. In a small saucepan over medium-low heat, pour in 1/4 cup of heavy cream, then break an ounce of cream cheese into small cubes and put them in as well. Whisk until the cream cheese melts and there aren’t any large chunks. This should only take a couple of minutes. If the sauce starts to boil, turn down the heat. Once the cream cheese is melted, add a pinch of Kosher salt to taste and as much black pepper as you can stand. Set it aside for now. By this point your bacon should be done. Remove it from the pan and drain it on paper towels. Pour off the excess bacon grease, then scramble 4 eggs in the skillet to a soft scramble. Remove your pizza crusts from the oven and flip them over.
The crusts after being flipped.
Add the sauce first, using about a tablespoon per pizza crust. Use the back of the spoon to spread it out to the edge of the crusts.
Time to get sauced!
Divide the scrambled eggs evenly for each crust. I ended up with about 3 tablespoons of eggs per crust, then put 2 tablespoons of shredded cheddar on each one, and finally sprinkle with the bacon. Put the pizzas back in the oven for about 5 minutes, until the cheese melts. Serve immediately, or cool and store in the refrigerator. These only need about 30 seconds in the microwave to be nice and hot for a quick weekday breakfast.
Individual Keto Breakfast Pizzas
Single-serving breakfast pizzas using Fathead dough and a sawmill gravy sauce.
Begin to cook the bacon in a non-stick skillet. When it's done, put it on paper towels to drain and discard the excess grease.
Preheat the oven to 425 degrees.
While the bacon cooks, prepare the fathead dough. In a medium-sized microwaveable bowl, combine the mozzarella and 1 ounce of cream cheese. Cook in the microwave 30 seconds at a time, stirring after each time, until the mozzarella is melty and stretchy and you can no longer see clumps of the cream cheese after you stir it. In my microwave, this takes about a minute and 20 seconds.
Stir in the almond flour until it's incorporated, then add the egg and stir or knead until you can no longer see clumps of raw egg in the dough and the texture is smooth and even.
Divide the dough into six equal balls, then either roll them into 4-5" circles between two sheets of parchment paper, or press them into circles by hand. Put them on a sheet pan lined with parchment paper and bake for 7 minutes.
While the crusts bake, make the sauce and eggs. Pour the heavy cream into a small saucepan over medium-low heat, then add the cubed cream cheese. Whisk constantly until the cream cheese melts and there are no large clumps in the sauce. Add a pinch of salt and a generous amount of black pepper. Set aside. Soft scramble the eggs in the bacon skillet, and set aside.
When the crusts come out of the oven, flip them over, then top each one with about a tablespoon of sauce, 2-3 tablespoons of eggs, 2 tablespoons of shredded cheddar, and 1/2 slice of crumbled bacon. Return to the oven and bake for 5 minutes, until the cheese is melted.
Macros per serving: 364 calories, 2 grams net carbs, 19 grams protein, 31 grams fat.
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I should probably mention right off the bat that I’m receiving no compensation for this review. (Although I’d be glad to get some, so hmu, Senza devs!) No recipe here–this one is about my favorite app for tracking macros. I know a lot of keto folks use Carb Manager, but not many have heard of Senza. Senza is basically MyFitnessPal or LoseIt, but specifically meant for the keto diet.
Just like those other apps, Senza starts out by getting your general information–age, gender, height, and current weight. It uses that to calculate your macros. It has me eating 25 grams of net carbs, 100 grams of protein, and 123 grams of fat. It calculates the net carbs of everything so you don’t have to.
There are two main parts of the app where you’ll spend the most time, your feed and your journal. In your feed there are links to articles about the keto diet, as well as links to fun recipes to try. It’ll also give you a daily report that scores your previous day’s intake from 1-99 based on how close you came to hitting all your macros for the day. The best I’ve ever done is a 98–I’m still searching for that elusive 99! Throw me a screenshot if you hit it.
The Senza feed, with my daily score and one of the suggested recipes.
The journal is what you use to actually track your food. They have a great database of foods, from restaurant meals to individual ingredients. You can choose the unit of measurement, too, so if you ate 26 grams of onions, just select “grams” after you search and it’ll filter your results to only entries that measure in grams. This is really cool when you’re cooking, which leads me to my favorite portion of the app.
My journal entry for breakfast and lunch today. Note the macros on the top.
Under the “My food” tab, you have the option of entering in either an individual product that isn’t on their list, or a recipe. For the product, it’ll have you take a picture of the label, then enter the information. Once they get it and see that you did it correctly, they’ll add it to the database, but until then, you can save it and track it on your own. For recipes, it’ll have you name it, select how many servings are in it, and then you enter in each ingredient individually and it will calculate the macros for you. I think a lot of people on keto have trouble tracking when they cook at home, because it’s so hard to figure out exactly what is in each serving. This makes it foolproof. My recipe macros are calculated using this feature.
Another interesting feature that I haven’t used all that much is “Keto Radar”. If you allow the app to see your location when you’re using it, it will show you nearby restaurants that may have keto options. I find it a little bit limited, especially with non-chain restaurants. For example, when I search around my workplace, I can see all the restaurants, but the only one that has low-carb menu options shown is Chipotle. It only shows restaurants within about a five-block radius, which is nice if you need to grab a quick lunch and you’re not sure what’s nearby. But overall, I don’t find this feature to be particularly useful. If I traveled a lot for work, it would probably be invaluable.
The app also has some cool coaching features that I haven’t tried. What I like about those is that you can earn points with the app by tracking foods or adding friends, and then use those points to get help. I have over 17,000 points earned since January, and to give an example, a one-day meal plan is 100 points and a macro review is 650. They also sell some products, which I think you can use points for discounts, but I’ve never tried so don’t quote me on that. You can add friends, track your weight or exercise, and link to Apple Health or Fitbit. You can also set up the app to change your macros if you exercise enough. For example, if I burn over 150 calories, I have it set up so I can eat up to an extra 100 calories, with an added 2 net carbs and up to 20 grams of extra protein. I try not to use it, but it’s nice to know that I can. It can also track IF, which I’ve never done because I like breakfast too much to skip it. And finally, they have an option for real-time chat with keto coaches if you have a question about something. I haven’t tried that one yet, but if you do, please comment with your experience so I can add it to the review!
All in all, Senza is the best app I’ve found to support a keto diet, and I highly recommend it.
It was a balmy 94 degrees outside when I made my meal plan for the week, so of course I decided that what I was currently craving was potato soup. I’m…kinda weird. The second most obvious issue here is, of course, that potato soup isn’t […]
Our garden has started producing cucumbers like nobody’s business, so expect some more cucumber recipes from me in the near future. My next attempt will be refrigerator pickles, because I need to find some way of using all this stuff. There are about 20 blossoms on that plant. I’ll probably have to give some away, but I’m going to do my best to not have to do that. I’m also pretty close to having a bumper crop of jalapeños, so be prepared for some Mexican recipes as well. And zucchini. And our tomatoes just started to turn. Yikes.
My goal here, since I was serving it alongside a Korean BBQ inspired chicken, was to make something resembling kimchi, just minus the fermentation and with a decent amount of added fat for the keto part. This one involves a couple hours of marinating, so don’t make it unless you have time for it to really soak in.
Start with two large English cucumbers. Those are the seedless variety. You can use the seeded ones, just scoop them out before proceeding. Keep the peels on, because you’ll need them to sort of hold things together. Slice them lengthwise down the middle, and then crosswise to make half-moon shaped chunks that are about 3/4 of an inch or so thick. Put them in a gallon-sized ziploc freezer bag.
Sliced cucumbers in the bag ready for you to take out your frustrations.
Now here’s the fun part. You get to hit them. Take the flat side of a meat mallet or a rolling pin and hammer them. You don’t want to pulverize them, just break them apart a bit. That’s why you keep the skins on, because it keeps them from being a complete mess. They’ll look like this when they’re ready.
Smashed cucumbers. Some more smashed than others.
Make the marinade next. For this you’ll want 1/4 cup of rice wine vinegar, 2 tablespoons of sesame oil, 2 tablespoons of soy sauce (tamari or coconut aminos will work depending on how clean your keto is), and a tablespoon each of chili oil and sriracha. Whisk those together, and then pour it over the cucumbers. Be careful, because you may have punctured the bag they’re in. Either transfer them to a new bag or double bag it to avoid a leaky mess. Leave them outside of the fridge for two hours with the bag laying flat on the counter, flipping once. If you make this with my Korean BBQ chicken, you can put the bag back in the fridge when you start the chicken, so the cucumbers can cool a little bit. Just before serving, drain the marinade from the bag. If you’d like, sprinkle it with sesame seeds before serving.
Slice the cucumbers lengthwise, then into half-moon slices that are approximately 3/4 inch thick. Put them in a gallon-sized Ziploc bag. Smash them with the flat side of a meat mallet or a rolling pin until they're all cracked down the middle.
In a medium-sized bowl, mix together the vinegar, sesame oil, soy sauce, chili oil, and sriracha, and whisk until emulsified. Pour over the cucumbers, being careful to either double bag them or transfer them to another bag to avoid any leaks that may have been caused by the smashing,
Seal the bag and put it on a countertop, keeping the cucumbers in a single layer, for two hours, flipping the bag after an hour. They can be served at room temperature or refrigerated for about 20-30 minutes before serving. Drain the bag immediately prior to serving. Sprinkle each serving with sesame seeds right before serving, if desired.
Macros are difficult to calculate due to the fact that most of the marinade ends up being discarded. Assuming that each serving has 1 tablespoon of marinade clinging to it (which is probably an overestimate), macros are as follows: 73 calories, 5 grams net carbs, 1 gram protein, 5 grams fat. This does not count the sesame seeds.
As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Any embedded link to a product earns me a portion of the purchase price if you click and buy it.
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