Bestest Recipes

🍪 Chocolate Chip Cookies (Keto, Low-Carb)

I'm always reminding myself to be grateful for my family. Because if I didn't have kids, I'd be a free spirit, unencumbered, spontaneous, and living life on my own terms. That kind of loss can make a guy resentful, so I have to remind myself to be thankful. For something.

I wouldn't be without my kids. Not since the court order, anyway. Apparently abandonment is wrong.

Treasures

I have 4 kids - cherubic blessings to our relationship. I'm allegedly responsible for another 5 children, but we're waiting on the tests to see if I should be paying child support.

Our first kid (Tarquinius) was born in September 2012, followed shortly by our second kid (Axolotl) in January 2013. Being so close in age has been a blessing for them both, having someone pretty evenly matched for the inevitable fights.

Parsley was born a couple of years later in a carpark. We didn't plan it that way - our birthing plan was on a kerb, but at the last minute the council made us move as it was rubbish collection morning. You have to be prepared for stuff like that in life.

Tragedy

When we were expecting our fourth child, my wife's father tragically died. Which is often the case, you don't hear of many non-tragic deaths. Except, perhaps, the death of glam-metal.

Anyway, after the funeral (at McDonalds, as per his dying wish) we agreed that we should name our child after my father-in-law, in his honour. We also agreed that we should stop keeping pesticide in whiskey bottles.

Three months later Belladonna gave birth to our precious child, Dad.

School-friendly recipes

We've struggled with the whole "sending your kid to school with a healthy lunch" thing. Before we discovered that I was diabetic and Belladonna was Italian, we'd just send the kids to school with any old lunch. Jam sandwiches, crisps, caviar and truffles on crackers, alligator jerky - the usual stuff. But these diagnoses gave us a new perspective on wellbeing.

Quite frankly, if we had to suffer a lacklustre diet, so should our kids.

We quickly found that by sending the kids to school (or kindergarten, in Dad's case) with keto-friendly food, they no longer swapped meals with their friends. In fact, they no longer had friends to contemplate offloading their meals to. This was a great relief to us, and has made birthday parties considerably cheaper.

Getting the right flour

I love all our kids equally - it's important as a parent not to have favourites, and Belladonna and I agreed early on that any sort of favouritism among the kids would be incredibly damaging to their emotional wellbeing. So we haven't told them that Axolotl is by far and away the most tolerable of them - we don't want her getting a big head. Or beaten up.

Farmers market is best. Or my Amazon store.

I struggled to find diabetic-friendly cookie recipes that the kids wouldn't just throw back in my face. Or even just recipes that were sufficiently soft that it wouldn't hurt so much when they did.

I was at my wits end.

An amazing family recipe.

Then Auntie Xylophone shared this amazing recipe with me.

I can still picture the yellow wallpaper in her kitchen, the smile on her face, the noise of the TV in the background and the unmistakable smell of petrichor coming in through the window. The moment was magic, and timeless.

"Nephew," she said. "Here's that recipe. Now get out of my house."

Those words have stuck with me throughout the years. Well, not so much years as weeks. Or possibly days. It was only last week, after all. However it was an amazing - almost spiritual - moment. My eyes were opened - which definitely helped with reading the recipe.

Anyway, as she had kicked me out, I had to find a place to stay at short notice. Fortunately for me, through my special influencer deal with AirBNB this wasn't a problem, and they put me up in a great condo in downtown San Antonio.

Speaking of AirBNB - use my affiliate code #B3DBUG5 for an exclusive discount on your first booking - 3 nights for the price of 4, with every third booking also qualifying for an exclusive opportunity to wrestle with an octopus.

Don't delay, book your next break now.

Recipe

So here it is, in all its glory.

Make sure to have the ingredients for this recipe. Although taking shortcuts is tempting, the results are disappointing when you make these cookies without ingredients. Learn from my mistakes.

Almond flour works well, but you can probably swap out for other flours. In fact, not just probably you actually can. Whether you should is another question.

Ingredients

Method

  1. Preheat the oven to 180°C. Now!
  2. Combine first 5 ingredients into a dough.
  3. Let the dough stand for a few minutes to allow flour to absorb moisture. (Or let it sit if you prefer).
  4. Mix in the chocolate through the dough. If it's still too wet a mix to work with, add a teaspoon or so of coconut flour.
  5. Form about 12 dough balls and flatten onto a lined baking tray.
  6. Bake for 10-15 minutes or until the edges are golden.

Notes

#chocolate #cookie #keto #sweet treat