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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Sometimes you make things that just aren’t all that photogenic. I try to beautify things as much as possible without going too far into staging, but there are times when this is a bit of a Sisyphean effort. This particular recipe is one of those times. It’s sloppy and unkempt, like the culinary equivalent of a hung-over businessman showing up to work on Monday with his shirt half-untucked and his tie askew. You know what I mean. Or maybe you don’t, and this is just me making use of my English major. The good news is that it’s easy and tastes good, and while I can’t figure out a way to appropriately extend that metaphor, what I can do is make food that’s yummy and that you’ll eat. Plus, it’s a fat bomb of a meal, which is nice.
Start with two packages of smoked sausage, the pre-cooked U-shaped variety that you can get at the grocery store. We’re not going fancy here today. Make sure to check the label, because some varieties might have hidden carbs. Slice them on the bias, approximately as thick as your index finger. In a large Dutch oven or similar, over medium-high heat, brown them until they’re nice and crispy on each side, then remove them and put them in a bowl. Into the same Dutch oven, dump a 16-ounce bag of pre-shredded coleslaw (just the cabbage and carrots, NOT the prepared kind!) and pour over 1/2 cup of chicken broth. Cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until most of the chicken broth has evaporated. Break up or cube 4 ounces of cream cheese and stir it into the cabbage, allowing it to begin to melt. Add 1/2 cup of heavy cream and 2 tablespoons of a spicy mustard. I used the Dijon from Trader Joe’s because it has a nice strong horseradish kick to it, but spicy brown or stadium-style mustard would also work. Just don’t use the yellow mustard, because it tastes more like vinegar than anything else. Stir it around until it’s all melted together, then throw the sausage back in and let it warm back up while the sauce thickens. Once it’s thickened, taste it for seasoning and add salt and pepper to taste. I added 1/2 teaspoon of salt, but I like things REALLY salty, so you might want to add less. The more pepper the better, though.
This one is a bit high in calories. If you can’t eat that much, just do a single package of sausage. It’ll cut the calories considerably. Otherwise, enjoy your lunch for the week. It’ll get you to dinner without feeling the least bit hungry. This would be a great recipe for IFers, if you’re into that sort of thing.
Smoked Sausage with Mustard Creamed Cabbage
A quick and easy meal-prep recipe that's great for intermittent fasters.
Slice the sausage into approximately 3/4 inch thick pieces. Fry them in a Dutch oven over medium-high heat until they're crispy and browned on both sides. Remove and set aside.
Empty the bag of coleslaw into the pot and reduce the heat to medium. Add the chicken broth into the pot and cook until the broth is mostly gone. Add the cream cheese in chunks and stir until they begin to melt, then add the cream and mustard. Stir until the cream cheese is completely melted, then add the sausage back into the pot and simmer until the sauce thickens. Add salt and pepper to taste, then serve or put into meal-prep containers.
Macros per serving: 677 calories, 5 grams net carbs, 25 grams protein, 59 grams fat.
Keyword keto, low carb, make ahead, meal prep, pork, sausage
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A great keto substitute for potatoes is daikon radish, and in this breakfast recipe, you’ll learn how to make a veggie hash with it. Top with scrambled or poached eggs for a wonderful vegetarian keto breakfast!
I do my meal planning for the week on Thursdays or Fridays, because that’s when the sales at my grocery store update. I try to use ingredients that are on sale whenever possible, because who wants to spend extra money? This makes meal planning somewhat interesting, though, as I never know what I’m going to do until I open the grocery store website and take a look at their sale flyers. This week, both organic eggs and sausage were on sale. I had some great shelf-stable heavy cream in my pantry, and a bunch of extra cream cheese from the last time it was on sale, so the idea of biscuits and gravy popped into my head. But I’ve never been able to find a keto biscuit recipe that I really liked, and try as I might, I’m terrible at inventing baking recipes. It involves way too much precision. So I started brainstorming an idea about how I could incorporate the flavors of sausage gravy into some other sort of breakfast, and these egg cups were born.
Start with a one-pound tube of breakfast sausage of your choice. I prefer the sage variety, but hot or traditional would work here as well. Just don’t use maple, because carbs and also yuck. There’s a place for sausage and syrup, it’s just not in this particular recipe. You’ll also need some muffin tins. This recipe makes 8 servings, so you’ll probably need two. I use silicone muffin tins, which I like because they don’t stick as much as metal, and they are bendy so it’s easier to get the finished product out. But if you only have a metal tin, it’ll be fine for this case, because the sausage won’t stick at all. Divide the sausage into 8 equal pieces. Roll a piece into a ball, then flatten it out into as thin of a circle as you can make. Put it into one of the compartments of the muffin tin (is there a better word for that?) and press it tightly against the sides and bottom, making sure that the bottom is as flat as you can get it. The sausage will shrink when it bakes and change shape, so these will turn out to be less cups and more bowls, but if you don’t make sure they’re thin, they won’t be able to hold the eggs.
This is what the sausage looks like when it’s in the tin.
When you’re finished making all the sausage cups, put the tins in a preheated 350-degree oven for 15 minutes. At this point, most of the fat will be rendered from the sausage and it will have pulled away from the sides of the tin. Using a fork, tip the sausage cups over to allow any fat to drain into the muffin tin compartment, then place each one on a sheet pan lined with aluminum foil and pop them back in the oven.
While they’re in the oven, make the eggs and cream. Beat six eggs, adding a pinch of kosher salt. Melt a tablespoon of butter in a large non-stick skillet. While the butter is melting, measure six tablespoons of your cream in a separate small saucepan and set it to medium-low. Add two ounces of cream cheese and let it simmer, whisking occasionally, as you scramble the eggs in the butter to a soft scramble. Don’t scramble them too hard, because they won’t stick together as well, and they’ll be rubbery when you reheat them. When the eggs are scrambled, remove them from the heat and remove the sausage cups from the oven. At this point, your cream cheese should be mostly incorporated into the cream. If not, keep whisking until it does. Add a pinch of salt and as much black pepper as you can tolerate into the gravy. The more pepper the better, honestly. Stir the gravy into the eggs, mixing thoroughly. They should be a nice scoopable texture. Drain any extra fat from the sausage cups, then divide the eggs evenly into the bowls, sprinkling them with additional pepper. Store in the fridge in a shallow rectangular meal prep container.
Divide the sausage into 8 equal balls. Flatten each ball into a circle, then press each circle into a compartment of the muffin tin. Make sure that the bottom is as flat as possible and that the sides come as close to the top as you can get it. When you're finished with all of them, put them in the oven for 15 minutes. After that time, remove them, drain any accumulated fat, put them on a foil-lined cookie sheet and put them back in the oven.
Put the cream into a small saucepan and add the cream cheese. While it heats, melt the butter in a non-stick skillet. Beat six eggs with a pinch of salt, then scramble them to a soft texture in the skillet, making sure to also whisk the gravy frequently while the eggs cook. When the eggs are finished, remove them from the heat and remove the sausage cups from the oven as well.
If the cream cheese hasn't melted into the cream at this point, keep whisking until it does, then add as much pepper as you can stand and a pinch of salt. Stir the finished gravy into the eggs, then scoop the egg mixture into each sausage cup. Sprinkle with more pepper before serving or storing.
Macros per serving: 295 calories, 1 gram net carbs, 16 grams protein, 26 grams fat.
Keyword breakfast, easy, eggs, keto, low carb, make ahead, sausage
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