Recipe: 4-ingredient GF PB Cookies

You just need four ingredients to make these delicious, gluten-free peanut butter cookies!

INGREDIENTS
1 C creamy peanut butter
1 C sugar
1 egg
1 t vanilla

DIRECTIONS
Preheat oven to 325F. Combine all ingredients; let sit for 10 minutes. Drop spoonfuls on to ungreased baking sheet and press down with fork. Cook for 10 minutes, or until edges are golden brown. Makes about 18 cookies.

Recipe: Pizza-Inspired Low-Carb Frittatina

I told you, we're pizza fanatics. So here's another way to enjoy my favorite meal while sticking to a low-carb diet (for me, South Beach). I made this after being a little disappointed in my choice of toppings for the summer squash crust I made. I wanted to just do it with tomato sauce and mozzarella, but I didn't want to shred another squash and go through all that, so I just decided to make the "crust" out of eggs. Kind of like a frittata, but super thin and covered with toppings. Pizza toppings. Hence my wonderful name "Pizza-inspired Frittatina."

INGREDIENTS
3 eggs
1/2 t dried thyme
sea salt
fresh cracked pepper
1/4 C tomato sauce
1/4 C lowfat mozzarella
toppings (I used deli pepperoni and sliced olives)

DIRECTIONS
1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Coat pie dish evenly with olive oil cooking spray.
2. In a bowl, beat eggs, thyme, and salt and pepper (base amounts on your preferences, I just used a little bit of each). Pour eggs into pie dish and bake for 5 minutes.
3. Prepare your toppings (I used 5 black olives, sliced, and 3 paper-thin slices of deli pepperoni). After 5 minutes, remove dish from oven. Spread tomato sauce on top and sprinkle with mozzarella. Add toppings and return to oven for 2 minutes.

Word of advice: orange is not the best color as a background for photographing pizza.

It's that easy! Nutrition facts will vary depending on what you use, but mine came out to 400 calories, 9 grams of carbs, 29 grams of protein, and 24 grams of fat. If I had planned ahead of time and gotten low-carb tomato sauce, it would have only had about 6 carbs total. But I just used what was open in the fridge. Also, I know turkey pepperoni would have been better for me and had fewer calories, but I decided to let myself indulge a little. It's a lot harder to stick to a diet when you feel deprived, so little indulgences are important for the overall picture!

Recipe: Low-Carb Summer Squash Pizza Crust

So Friday night, I made an amazing low-carb pizza with a cauliflower crust. Saturday night, my husband was in the mood for pizza again. We're kind of pizza fanatics. We have eaten entire large pizzas on more occasions than I can count or remember. (No wonder we've both gained so much weight since getting married!) Anyway, I didn't have more cauliflower, but even if I did, I wanted something that wasn't quite so time consuming. I found a bunch of recipes and decided to try to make a crust using a summer squash I had in the fridge. The crust turned out all right, but it was very soft and had to be eaten with a fork. Also, I tried to mimic the toppings I used on the cauliflower crust, but the flavors didn't work as well together. But I am going to try making this again using tomato sauce and mozzarella (instead of the cottage cheese sauce), and I think it will be really good then.

SUMMER SQUASH PIZZA CRUST

 INGREDIENTS
1 summer squash
2 eggs
oregano
thyme
salt
pepper
toppings

DIRECTIONS
1. Preheat oven to 400F. Shred squash, lightly salt, and let sweat in a colander for 10 minutes. Place squash in a cotton kitchen towel and squeeze to remove excess moisture.

2. Combine squash with eggs and seasonings and pour into a greased pie pan. Bake 5-6 minutes, until eggs are set on top.
3. Add your toppings and return to oven for 5 minutes. Let stand 1 minute before cutting and serving.

Recipes: Cauliflower Pizza Crust and LC Ranch Chicken Pizza

Well, my friends and I had an epic girls' night in. Complete with homemade pizza. Only, normal pizza doesn't exactly fit into the South Beach diet. At least not Phase 1. And at least not if you want more than a couple bites. So I had my own special pizza. Okay, I'll be honest, when it was sitting next to the cheesy pepperoni pizza the other girls made, mine looked a little sad. But I actually loved the way it turned out and will definitely make it again! My whole 9" pizza, with toppings, had only 33 grams of net carbs! Also, I didn't check all the ingredients (particularly the cottage cheese and ranch mix), so I'm not 100% sure, but I think this could be a gluten free meal too.

Let's start with the crust. I looked around at different low-carb recipes and my favorite one was by Detoxinista. But since I'm also limiting my dairy, I didn't want to put cheese in my crust. So this is what I did.

CAULIFLOWER PIZZA CRUST

INGREDIENTS
1 head cauliflower
1 egg, beaten
1 t oregano
a pinch of salt (I forgot to add it, but I won't next time!)

DIRECTIONS
1. Preheat oven to 400F. Cut florets off cauliflower and discard stem. In a food processor, "rice" the cauliflower (see link to original recipe for more detailed instructions).
2. Put 1" water in a large pot and bring to a boil. Add cauliflower rice, cover, and boil for 5 minutes.
3. Strain cauliflower. Once cooled, place in a cotton kitchen towel and squeeze all the excess moisture out of it.
4. Combined squeezed cauliflower with remaining ingredients until you get mushy, but uniform dough.
5. Line a baking pan with parchment paper and press dough on to form pizza. (I made mine into a circle, even though I was baking it on a jelly roll pan.)
6. Bake 35-40 minutes until crust is firm and golden brown.

Okay, so the best part about this dough is that you can make it in advance. Which is what I did. You can freeze it, if you think that far ahead, but since mine was only done a day in advance, I just kept it in a dish. Anyway, the next part can be done immediately after cooking the crust, or whenever you feel like pizza and pull it out.

LOW-CARB RANCH CHICKEN PIZZA

INGREDIENTS
1 prepared low-carb pizza crust
1/2 C lowfat cottage cheese
1 T dry ranch mix
6 oz grilled chicken
mushrooms
olives
spinach

DIRECTIONS
1. Preheat oven to 400F. Combine cottage cheese and ranch. Spread evenly over crust.
2. Slice toppings (I really liked the combination of all of these, but feel free to mix and match veggies according to your preferences) and put on pizza.
3. Bake 5-10 minutes so everything is hot.

It really was delicious. I ate 3/4 of it and felt full, but had the last piece a few hours later. The whole thing had about 600 calories, so a moderate-sized dinner. But it was pizza! And it was delicious! And it filled me up! So, all in all, I'd say that was a success.

Recipe: Gluten Free Coconut Snickerdoodles

 INGREDIENTS

2 C sweet rice flour
1/2 C cornstarch
1 1/4 t baking powder
1 t salt
3/4 C unsalted butter
1 C granulated sugar
2 large eggs
1 1/2 t vanilla extract
1/4 C granulated sugar
1 T ground cinnamon
1/4 C shredded coconut

DIRECTIONS
1. In small mixing bowl, mix together flour, cornstarch, baking powder, and salt.
2. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, cream butter and 1 C sugar. Add eggs one at a time; blend thoroughly between each addition. Add vanilla and mix until light and fluffy.
3. Add dry ingredients to butter mixture and blend until dough forms. Cover dough and chill for two hours (or over night).
4. Preheat oven to 350F. Grease a cookie sheet with cooking spray. In a small bowl, combine cinnamon and 1/4 C sugar. Have coconut accessible in another small bowl.
5. Roll dough into 1-inch balls. Flatten each ball into a circle that is 3/8" thick. Dip both sides in cinnamon-sugar then place on cookie sheet. Sprinkle a pinch of coconut and another pinch of cinnamon-sugar over the top side of the cookie; pat coconut and cinnamon-sugar down into cookie.
6. Bake 8-10 minutes, or until lightly golden brown. Remove from oven and transfer to wire rack to cool.

(This recipe is based off of these Gluten-Free Snickerdoodles, with the changes that I made.)