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Chocolate and peanut butter balls, aka BuckEyes, are easy to make with this wls friendly recipe.

Last night, I was in the mood to make something in the kitchen... Believe it, or not! Sunday at Tim's family's house, they were talking about buckeyes, you know, the peanut butter balls with chocolate on the outside. This is Tim's favorite holiday dessert. His niece usually brings it to their celebrations.

Tonight while reading some protein boards, peanut butter kept coming up. So I decided to locate an old protein ball recipe (to follow). THEN! Eureka! It hit me... I would make TIM the dessert that he likes, only put a different spin on it... buckeye protein balls!

Mix the following ingredients to make the protein balls:
1 cup peanut butter
1 cup dry powdered milk
4 packets of Splenda
1 cup vanilla protein powder

Roll into 18 balls, refrigerate (I wanted to speed up the process, so shoved them into the freezer)

Melt sugar free chocolate (I used Valor SF Dark Chocolate)
Dip the protein balls into the melted SF chocolate
Let cool on wax paper

Don't laugh at my buckeyes! Let me also add, I am NOT good at melting chocolate. I think it must be an art. I ruined the first batch. I have tried microwaving before and it does not work for me. I don't own a double boiler and so the first try with a bowl in the saucepan was a complete failure! I will invest in a double boiler for future success!

UPDATE: Tim said they tasted like buckeyes, but that they were not as smooth of a texture. He liked them.  I took a few to my friend at work who is a low carb'er...  she asked for the recipe and said she loved them!

Bread, biscuits, muffins! Those are a few of my favorite things!  And here is a recipe for a low carb blue berry muffin/bread.  As the into suggests, this can be made into muffins or a loaf.  It just depends on what type of pans you have, and what sort of mood you are in!

At first, I was alarmed because I had never made fresh blueberry muffins/bread before.  Immediately fresh from the oven, the berries caused it to be a little wet.  But, give it a few minutes (you know how impatient I am!) and the muffin/bread "sets" terrificly.

Ingredients:

1/4 cup Low carb bake mix (used Bob's Red Mill)
1 rounded scoop of your favorite vanilla protein powder
4 Tablespoons + 2 tsp Soy Flour
1 teapsoon Baking Powder
1/4 cup plain yogurt
1/4 teaspoon Baking Soda
3 Tablespoons Unsweetened Applesauce
4 packets Stevia (you can use Splenda; I used the packets cause they were convenient)
3 tblsp Eggwhite substitute
1 1/2 teaspoons Wheat Gluten (optional)
your desired amount of blueberries

I baked these on 350 degrees starting out 8 minutes, then continued to add two minutes at a time until the fork came out clean. Remove from pan, allow to cool. (Top should get brown but take them out when the fork comes out clean. They "set" really well overnight and also, store in a baggie or airtight container so they don't dry out)

Melinda Crocker has been at it again...  in the kitchen, that is! This time it was to create a strawberry protein ice cream.  A few years ago, I tried a chocolate homemade ice cream recipe which required the ingredients be cooked in a pan on the stove first, then chilled, then frozen in the ice cream maker.  However, I have been unable to find it.  So, I decided to scour the internet for another recipe.  I found one on the HomeMade Ice Cream website.

So, I put some ingredients together and came up with my own "protein ice cream".  The end result was pretty.  And, it froze up quite nicely in the maker.  I was even able to make the spoon stand up in the cup as I rushed around getting my lights to shine on the cup.  (My dining room and kitchen are too dark for food pics, and I'm an amateur at the food porn and don't know the proper lighting techniques on the camera).  But, here is a picture of the protein ice cream and I will give you the recipe...  HOWEVER, I must admit to you, I read the directions incorrectly and mixed ALL the ingredients and then put it into the saucepan.  Luckily I realized what I had done before cooking any of it!!  I just threw it all into the maker anyhow and figured it was worth a try.

*Note, this has been drastically altered from the Ice Cream website.  I halved the recipe and it was to much for two people.  Next time I will do 1/4.

1/2 cup plus 2 tblsp of sugar replacement (I used a mixture of Splenda and Nature's Sweet Crystals)

1 1/2 cups Labrada Lean Body Strawberry RTD

5 egg yolk substitutes

1/2 tsp of Vanilla Extract

I thought it was just me, but it somewhat tasted like peach yogurt.  I asked Tim, "Do you like it?"  He said "Yes, but it tastes like peach."  OK, so it wasn't just me.  I said perhaps next time I could throw in some peaches and that would be a nice additive.  In the future, I will follow the directions on the Homemade Ice Cream website for custard by cooking the proper recipe ingredients on the stove first, and probably not adding so much sugar.  I didn't allow for the sweetener already in the Labrada Lean Body and it didn't take much to satisfy my sweet craving.   This is my first attempt this year, possibly my fourth attempt since weight loss surgery, at protein ice cream.  I'm going to do some more tweaking.

Two things I love:  COFFEE & ICE CREAM!  Why not merge the two into one fabulous protein supplement? I love coffee ice cream.  I've contemplated making some homemade ice cream since last summer...  but never got the courage up to try it.  After yesterday's Strawberry ice cream success, I figured I'd give it a try.  So, I searched the internet to find an easy coffee ice cream recipe, altered it, and would you believe, I STILL GOT THE DIRECTIONS WRONG!!  This one did not require cooking on the stove, but I cut the recipe to 1/4 and still forgot to change the amount of water in it!  Oh Lord.  Plus, if I don't make much sense in this post, it very could be because I'm drunk.  Can you get drunk from 1/4 tsp of Rum in cup of coffee ice cream?  My recipe called for rum flavoring and I did not have any.  (I will have to get myself some Rum flavored syrup if DaVinci makes any... or, since I feel so good and liked it so much, maybe I should keep using the REAL rum? Hmmm...

So here is my accidental mistake.  And let me just say that this ice cream recipe is more of a cold icy kind as compared to a smooth dairy/custard type.  But, don't be fooled!  The taste of this was awesome, and it stayed VERY cold the entire time I ate it!  No dripping.  No melting.  Hey, I even let it sit on the table while trying to food porn the thing!

I stuck 1/4 of a Lemon Pizelle in it to give a Coffee Shop treat effect!

COFFEE ICE CREAM (I am posting the recipe which produced the above result, although it wasn't the one I was to follow!)

Mix these dry ingredients:
1/4 c Splenda (I used 1/8 c splenda, 1/8 Nature's Sweet Crystals)
1 tblsp Espresso coffee powder
1 tblsp dry cocoa powder
1/2 cup hot water
Then let this cool

Add:
1/2 tsp Vanilla Extract
1/4 tsp Rum flavoring (I did not have this so I used 1/4 tsp of REAL RUM, so if my words don't make sense, maybe I am drunk!)
1/4 cup plus 2 tblsp Vanilla Labrada Lean Body RTD in the cardboard container