Pumpkin Cream Cheese Chocolate Chip Mug Cake for One
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The moist pumpkin cake part of this Pumpkin Cream Cheese Chocolate Chip Mug Cake for One is not unlike the inside of a pumpkin pie, especially if left on the gooey side (which I prefer). The cake isn’t overwhelmingly spiced like some pumpkin desserts, and the molten cream cheese and chocolate chip center is the perfect complement – no need for frosting! Based off of the ever-popular Cream Cheese Chocolate Chip Muffin (which is still my favorite mug muffin/cake of all time), this pumpkin version also uses glucomannan to create a moist, smooth-textured cake.
I’ve never been a fanatic pumpkin person, but I’ve discovered my favorite pumpkin flavor combo: pumpkin + chocolate. And the pumpkin can’t be too spiced. I like a little cinnamon and a touch of cloves, but I’m not a fan of nutmeg and ginger with my pumpkin so I steer clear of pumpkin pie spice. After many years I finally found out that it wasn’t pumpkin I disliked: just the spices that often went along with it! Don’t get me wrong – I love fresh ginger in curries and the like, but for some reason I just don’t enjoy it with pumpkin.
PS – Watch for a full size version of this pumpkin cake coming soon! CLICK HERE to sign up for my email newsletters if you want to be notified when it comes out.
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Clam Chowder
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This clam chowder is so rich and creamy and thick, but the secret to the chowdery goodness is not boatloads of cream and white flour but rather a genius trio of cauliflower + oat fiber + reduced-fat cream cheese! This clam chowder is loaded with veggies as well as savory seafood flavor that rivals any you’d find at your favorite seaside restaurant.
I do have a clam chowder recipe in my first cookbook, Necessary Food, but I decided to update it using some techniques I’ve learned since publishing it. This clam chowder is similar but thicker and more “chowdery.” It’s so rich and creamy and tastes even better the next day after the flavors have intensified! Ryan loved it. He’s a big fan of clam chowder and gave this version a thumbs up.
Since traditional chowder includes cubed potatoes, I substituted radishes – which lose their bite when cooked and mimic potatoes. I wouldn’t say that “You’ll never know the difference!” but they really are a good substitute that satisfy me, especially in soups when they marinate in other flavors.
Some notes on the ingredients I used:
- I prefer LifeSource brand oat fiber from Netrition.com. Trim Healthy Mama carries a gluten-free version. Use an oat fiber that is light in color and taste; they’re not all created equally! Oat fiber is a really fine, dry flour with no net carbs or fats, and I don’t know of a good substitute for it that would have the same flour-like effect in this recipe.
- I use Better than Bouillon chicken base from Walmart. It’s high quality and has a great flavor.
- I used Chicken of the Sea whole baby clams from Walmart in this recipe and was impressed with the quality over some canned clams I’ve used in the past.
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Cottage Cheesecake with Sour Cherry Topping
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I teased y’all with a picture of this delicious cottage cheesecake with sour cherry topping a few weeks ago and told you I’d be posting it “soon,” but my soons these days aren’t as soon as they used to be. 😛 Sorry ’bout that. Convenient Food releases next week and I just got back from a week of vacation with Ryan (actually I’m still in the airport, finishing up this blog post on a layover in Washington, DC), so now my schedule looks a little freer for the next month and I’m hoping to post the backlog of a dozen recipes that have been piling up over the last month or two. And create some new ones. 😉 Warning: I’m on a soup kick these days – and being in Canada and experiencing some REAL cold weather while visiting Ryan’s family only intensified my cravings for piping hot bowls of comfort food! I tell you what – I married into the right family. They love music and singing and they treated us to a family get-together where everyone brought homemade authentic Indian curries. My year was made.
This cottage cheesecake is sooo creamy and full of protein, but thanks to using cottage cheese instead of cream cheese as one would use in a traditional cheesecake, it’s much lower in calories! I paired it with a sour cherry topping because cheesecake and sour cherries are a classic combination that I remember from my childhood – only then it was a no-bake cheesecake with sugary cherry pie filling that one of the ladies from church brought to potlucks. This version is baked but actually has a similar texture to a no-bake cheesecake. It’s perfect, and it keeps well in the fridge.
A note on fuel type:
The net carbs from the sour cherries come to a little over 5 grams per serving, which fits into the 10 grams of net carbs for a THM S meal but does blur the lines a bit since cherries are technically a fruit and therefore an E fuel. The net carbs (minus fiber and sugar alcohols) for the whole dessert (slice of cheesecake + 1/3 cup of cherry topping) comes to 10.89 grams of net carbs, which is just over the line of acceptable if you’re counting everything and not just the added carb source in your calculations. You have a couple of options: 1) Just enjoy it as an S + an extra carb, 2) use a little less than 1/3 cup of cherry topping on your serving, or 3) use red raspberries in place of the sour cherries for the same color and tartness but fewer carbs.
Some notes about the ingredients I used:
- I prefer LifeSource brand oat fiber from Netrition.com. Trim Healthy Mama carries a gluten-free version. Use an oat fiber that is light in color and taste; they’re not all created equally! Oat fiber is a really fine, dry flour with no net carbs or fats, and I don’t know of a good substitute for it for this recipe. Some people use psyllium husk flakes to replace it, but I’m not sure if that substitute would work in this recipe or not. The cottage cheese and sour cream produce a lot of liquid (more so than the cream cheese in a traditional cheesecake), so the oat fiber helps soak the extra liquid up and I don’t recommend omitting it (I’ve tried).
- The gelatin also helps counteract the extra liquid in this cottage cheesecake. I used Knox gelatin because it dissolves well and I can get it cheaply, but if using a beef gelatin such as Great Lakes or Trim Healthy Mama brands, add an extra ½ teaspoon gelatin.
- If you don’t have tart cherries canned in water or would just like to reduce the carbs in this recipe, I recommend using red raspberries in place of the cherries and just using water in place of the cup of cherry water from the can of cherries. Adjust sweetness and thickener if needed. If using fresh cherries instead of canned cherries, just cook the topping down until the cherries are soft and mash them a bit to flavor the juice if needed.
- I used low-fat cottage cheese and sour cream in this recipe to cut down on needless calories for a lighter dessert, but since this is a THM S recipe you can feel free to use full-fat dairy products for a creamier, richer result.
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Cheeseburger Rice Soup
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Hello, everybody! I’m typing up this blog post from the warm comfort of my in-laws’ house in cold Ontario (although it’s what I would call “pleasantly cold,” not unbearably cold yet). I have SO MANY recipes to share with you but with wrapping up everything for the Convenient Food release next week I just haven’t had time to edit pictures, type up recipes, and put the puzzle pieces of a blog post together! I feel the tide slowly shifting though, so hopefully this Cheeseburger Rice Soup is the beginning of more consistent blog posts and recipes coming your way.
This cheesy, hearty soup is a healthy version of an old church cookbook recipe my mom used to make. The original used a copious amount of Velveeta cheese, which I’ve replaced with real cheese. I made this recipe for a fellowship meal at church and it makes 8 quarts as written, so feel free to halve the recipe if you don’t need quite so much.
Since this recipe combines carbs with fats, it’s a THM crossover. I’m sure some of you will ask if you can use cauli rice to replace the 6 cups of cooked brown rice and turn this into a THM S recipe. Far be it from me to shut down creativity and tell you not to tweak my recipes – because I fully encourage you to tweak my recipes to your own personal tastes (it’s what I do to everyone else’s recipes, after all) – but I highly recommend that you use real brown rice in this recipe for optimum comfort food level and heartiness. Use it as a treat now and then, or enjoy it more often when you reach goal weight. But, if you want to try using cauli rice in place of the brown rice, be my guest. The soup probably won’t be as thick, so feel free to add more cauli rice than the brown rice called for in the recipe. (You would use 6+ cups of cauli rice in place of the 6 cups of water and 3 cups of uncooked brown rice. I would try sautéing it with the vegetables, then add the rest of the ingredients. You may want to decrease the amount of carrots if you want a true THM S since they’re not a non-starchy veggie.) But all this experimentation will be upon your own head. I can only vouch for the recipe as written. 😉
On another very exciting subject, my new cookbook Convenient Food is officially releasing on October 31st! The special $19.99 pre-order price will no longer be available after that date, so order now! You can CLICK HERE to order, see a preview of the book, and watch a very long monologue video of me explaining all kinds of things about the book and answering frequently-asked questions as well as questions you didn’t know you had but should’ve asked. 😛
PS – My Canadian distributors have opened a pre-order on their website, so CLICK HERE to make use of that if you live in the great frigid north!
Just to whet your appetites, here are some of the recipes that will be coming your way here on the blog in the next few weeks:
- Cottage Cheesecake with Sour Cherry Topping
- Low-Carb Clam Chowder
- Pumpkin Cream Cheese Chocolate Chip Mug Cake for One
- Low-Carb Vegetable Beef Soup
If you want to make sure you see these recipes, the best way to do that is to subscribe to my blog via email! Social media outlets can be finicky about showing my posts to people and only a fraction of my Facebook followers see what I post, so make sure you don’t miss these recipes!…
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