Chocolate Pie

7 Carb Chocolate Pie

(Seriously, the entire pie is 7 carbs... all of it.)

I'm going to be frank with you, I really don't like pie. Something about the crust just doesn't do it for me. Because of that I've never made a regular pie. That being said, as I type this, I am consuming a piece of chocolate pie so incredibly wonderful that it was kidnapped for consumption by those of us in the household who don't eat low carb.

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This particular pie is an incredibly rich dessert. The crust has a wonderful dark chocolate flavor, remarkably reminiscent of brownie (which it may be altered into in the very near future....). The filling is light and creamy, very much like chocolate mousse. We cut the pie into eighths, and even that was a little bit too much as rich as it was. Each of the eight slices of the pie have .8 carbs

I'm sure you're ready to eat this yourself, so without further delay... Chocolate Pie!

Crust: (Thank you to Sugar Free Mom for the base recipe)

2 cups Almond Flour

1/8th Tsp of salt 

3 tbsp of butter 

1/4 cup of cocoa powder 

2 tsp Splenda (This can be eliminated for less carbs*)

1/8 tsp Stevita Cinnamon Sweetener

1/8 tsp Stevita Vanilla Sweetener

Combine all dry ingredients, add butter, (melted) egg and stevita flavorings. Press into a greased and powdered pan (use cocoa powder) perferate with fork and minutes bake for 12 at 350 degrees. Cool before filling.

Filling:

2 cups of Heavy Cream 

3 egg whites

2/3 cup of cocoa powder (make sure your cocoa is zero carb!)

2 tsp of Splenda 

1 tsp chilled coffee (does not add coffee flavor, richens the chocolate)

Combine ingredients, beat until fluffy.

Chocolate Garnish:

100% chocolate bar

1/8 tsp of stevia sweetener

Melt chocolate, add sweetener (this is a good place to add fat if you need. 1 tsp olive oil) allow to harden in chocolate mold (or ice cub trays but do not freeze)  grate chocolate over pie filling as garnish.

*

We chose to do part Splenda, part Stevia because we find that straight stevia has a tendency to be more bitter. You are welcome to use straight Stevia, or combine it with your own choice of sweeteners. 

Enjoy!


Edit: A note from CJ, if you let the pie sit over night, the crust becomes even more brownie like. He likes it better.

Product Recommendations

Product Recommendations!

Because I've spent at least as much time looking up zero/low carb products as I have cooking, here's a list of our favorites so you don't have to!

At this time, we receive no compensation for having them listed here, this list is entirely for your convenience. 

Zero Carb Products are marked with:

Low carb Products are as marked.

Meat and Cheeses
One thing we most certainly want to avoid is using carbs for our proteins. A lot of meat and cheese is zero carb, but here are some products that depend on the brand.

Sausage - Gunnoes Sausages (we buy ours at Kroger)

Bacon - Gwaltney's bacon 

Baking Products

Baking Cocoa: We use Equal Exchange, organic baking cocoa, it is, as of now, the only zero carb cocoa we've found

Beverages

"Ice"

Crystal Light - As far as I have found all Crystal Light products are carb free

"Dairy"

Silk Unsweetened original Almond Milk - If you choose to use a different brand, be cautious. Some brands "Unsweetened" do have carbs!

Flavor Alternatives

We absolutely adore Capella Concentrated Flavor drops. The price initially seems a little high, but when we realized that just a couple of drops is enough to flavor for baking, and just one to two drops for beverages, for us it was a really good investment. These are zero carb, zero calorie high potency flavor drops. You can get them on Amazon or on Capellaflavors.com

We also really like Stevita flavors, concentrated Stevia sweet and flavoring. We use them predominantly in beverages, they work really well in coffee and hot chocolate

Sweeteners:

Stevia Sweetener - Liquid is 0 carbs

Splenda - .5g net carbs per packet

Aspartame - We tend to avoid this one as a sweetener, unfortunately a lot of zero carb "diet" products still use it. 

Hot Cocoa

Before he went on the Modified Atkins Diet, CJ loved sweets. They've been particularly difficult for him to give up, so in order to help him feel like he's not completely deprived, we've been working on coming up with ZERO carb alternatives for sweets. (Trying to save as many of those limited carbs as possible to get important nutrients from vegetables.) Because hot chocolate is a drink and "sweets" we really wanted it to be zero carbs.  Finally we've found the right ingredients to achieve zero carb hot chocolate. This particular recipe is more a guideline, we use exclusively zero carb ingredients, so it's about finding the right combination of these ingredients to suit your own taste.

Please note: Not all ingredients are created equal, check out our product recommendation page for specific information about brands we know to be zero carb and for easily accessable nutrition information on low carb products.


Without further ado...

Zero Carb Hot chocolate!

Start by warming on the stove top: 1/2 cup heavy cream and 1 1/2 cups of Almond Milk. (1)

(Be careful NOT to let this get to a boil, when allowed to boil, a gross film rises to the surface that needs to be skimmed off, best to avoid.)

Next we add a little bit ( 1-2 tablespoons) of coffee. (2) This isn't so much to add the flavor of coffee, but to highten the richness of the chocolate. (though feel free to add more coffee, less cream/almond milk if you want something closer to Mocha.)

Add about 1/4 cup of unsweetened cocoa powder, (3) whisk to disolve. (Add more or less depending on preferences of richness, remember the coffee will increase the chocolate's intensity.)

This next part is really about personal preference, this is sweetness and flavor. The following are a couple of
Stevia flavors that we've used, feel free to experiment with your own flavors (peppermint hot chocolate, anyone?)

Vanilla

Cinnamon

Caramel 

Toffee

The thing to remember with stevia, is when used in large quantities, it can have a bitter after taste, if you want really sweet hot chocolate, consider using a half packet of splenda (.25 carbs) in combination with approximately 4 drops of the the liquid stevia, the stevia increases the sweetness of splenda. Another option for flavoring if you wish to avoid the stevia altogether and substitute your own sweetner, you can use unsweetened, concentrated flavor drops. There is a lot more variety with these.

   Finally heavy cream is zero carb, and when beaten with any zero carb sweetner (and if you desire flavor) makes up an easy zero carb whipped cream.

Pour cocoa into mug, top with whipped cream and enjoy your zero carb hot cocoa!

 (To this cup we also added zero carb baking chocolate curls for a special touch!)

(1.) We found that doing less heavy cream more almond milk was more cost effective and reduced the feeling of the cream coating the inside of the mouth.

(2.) We have found that caffeine seems to correlate with CJ's seizure activity, so we use decaf coffee.

(3.) Brand is REALLY important with Cocoa powder, as most brands have 1-5 carbs per two tablespoons, we use Equal Exchange Organic Baking Cocoa, it is the ONLY zero carb baking cocoa I have found, if you have another one, let me know! (Again the information on all ingredients we use in our recipes is available on our product recommendations page.)

A whole new world

A few weeks ago, I took on the seemingly simple task of maintaining a "low carb" diet for my brother in hopes of gaining control of previously uncontrolled Epilepsy. There are two diets used in the hopes of controlling Epilepsy when medications do not. The first is the Ketogenic diet, which I admittedly know very little about, the second is the Modified Atkins (described as a less restricted form of the Ketogenic diet) which is the plan we're following. 

   The point of both diets is the achievement of "Ketosis." According to The Charlie Foundation the diets work by being "high in fat, supplying adequate protein and being low in carbohydrates. This combination changes the way energy is used in the body. Fat is converted in the liver into fatty acids and ketone bodies. Another effect of the diet is that it lowers glucose levels and improves insulin resistance. An elevated level of ketone bodies in the blood, a state known as Ketosis, leads to a reduction in the occurrence of epileptic seizures." 

    For my brother, who henceforth will be referred to as CJ, while maintaining a caloric intake of 1,600 to 2,000 calories, he is allotted 60 grams of protein, no more than 20 grams of net carbohydrates (Net Carbs being total carbs, minus fiber) daily. Additionally because CJ is already pretty significantly underweight, where as traditional Atkin's dieters have body fat to burn, we have to supplement as much fat into his diet as possible. Though as we have discovered, not all fat is created equal, and certain fats (i.e. olive oil and avocado) are significantly more desirable than others.   

   Over the course of the last few weeks, we've gone through a lot of recipes (and a brief phase of repeated fried eggs, Atkins shakes, and Atkins frozen dinners immediately after my son was born.) Some of those recipes were really good, even my husband enjoyed them, and he's a self-proclaimed food snob. To be fair some of them were bad... like REALLY bad. Think, "You know, why don't you go get a frozen dinner tonight instead." bad. But of the decent and good recipes, a lot of them are really worth sharing. So enjoy my ever evolving cook book, and feel free to leave your own favorite low carb recipes!

                   -Kate