I get asked about hot chocolate recipes a lot. A lot a lot. I currently have three recipes, one that will probably kill you with calories, one that can be vegan and is lower calorie and the easiest one, hot cocoa. This recipe is super easy, quick to do and very satisfying. It definitely ticks all the hot chocolate boxes! It's currently winter here in South Africa, and my first year with a much lower body fat percentage, so I am constantly freezing. This recipe is going to save me this year. 

My all time keto favourite staple is definitely scrambled egg - it's the easiest way to do breakfast, or lunch. The macros on this meal are almost perfect at 1% carbs, 17% protein and 82% fat. This recipe is loosely based on Gordon Ramsay's scrambled eggs. Waide and I LOVE this recipe and we decided that sour cream in scrambled egg is life and my recipe has since evolved from this over the last few years. 

People often ask me for keto snack ideas or ideas for appetizers and this is one of my favourites. It's easy to do and even if you aren't a fan of chilli, these are perfect. I made these last year for Christmas dinner and it was fantastic, everyone loved them. 

I've been giving this post a lot of thought lately and honestly, I can't remember exactly how I stumbled on keto. I live in South Africa and banting is a big thing here and has been for a while. Banting is Tim Noakes' version of the Low Carb High Fat diet. So I wasn't totally unaware of this way of eating but I was very against it. I bought into the rhetoric that fat will kill you, carbs are fuel and complex carbohydrates are absolutely necessary for life to continue. Yup. Hook, line and sinker. At least until I started testing my blood sugar after eating "healthy foods".

I would also like to pause here to say, I am not a doctor or a dietician. This is not medical advice, and everyone responds differently to carbohydrates. So, if you feel strongly that people need complex carbs to be healthy… you should probably stop reading now.

Eating keto doesn't mean you are doomed to a pizza-less existence. There are a lot of options. If you are South African, there's col'cacchio, piza e vino, vovo telos and these are just the ones I can remember right now. If you aren't getting banting takeout in SA, you could make your own cauliflower pizza, fathead pizza, pizza bowl or skillet pizza. There are a lot of ways to get around the pizza issue. Skillet pizza is a quick, easy and amazing way of getting everything a traditional pizza has without the carbs; pizza toppings on a base of fried cheese.

This is not my original recipe, if you google "keto skillet pizza" you will find a lot of different ideas for this recipe... this is a simple step by step for something that is an easy keto meal.

In my opinion, pizza isn't really pizza without a tomato base. I used to put tomato paste on my pizzas but at 19g of carbs per 100g it's way too high. So I started making my own keto version. 

When I started eating low carb, I thought I was being stranded on a dessert-less island. But after I stopped feeling sorry for myself, I started looking at how I could tweak "normal" desserts into keto food. This has kind of turned into a bit of an obsession. I've managed to perfect keto marshmallows, ginger biscuits, brownies, cheesecake, waffles, pumpkin pie, hot chocolate, panna cotta and chocolate mousse. I tried a lot of "keto chocolate mousse" recipes and most of them were too fluffy or just tasted like cocoa powder so I stopped looking at the existing low carb mousse recipes and went back to how you make it normally, with sugar. From there, I experimented a LOT (Husband was happy to eat the "fails") until I figured it out. 

I don't like salad. And having said that... I could live on this stuff. I made this for the first time for Christmas at my parents' house. My mom was a little against the idea of a salad without lettuce (she likes lettuce, I don't)  but as it turns out, it was a winner. The salad has taken on a life of it's own as well, I'm pretty sure keto.ivy lives on this stuff. I made it for family over Easter and my cousins were literally fighting over who got to eat the last of the salad. Three girls, under 14, it was hilarious! If you aren't a fan of salad, give this a try, it might totally change your mind. 

Keto quiche, known in my house as Everything Quiche because it literally depends on what you have in your fridge, then you just put everything in. This is a super easy to make and easy to tweak recipe. I usually make these in single portions for lunches, and then accidental_keto_husband eats them before I get a chance. You could also put this in a larger pie dish (to eat immediately or freeze) and I'm 100% sure these would even work in muffin sizes. There are so many possibilities for this recipe. If you do it in a way I haven't thought of, new way to serve it or adding another ingredient that is amazing, please let me know in the comments! 

There are a few dishes that I consider keto staples and I will be doing a "keto basics" series with recipes and techniques for these. This is the first one in that series. 

Aubergine, brinjals, egg plant, whatever you want to call them, are pretty versatile keto foods. I hated aubergine until I started keto... could not eat it at all - texture issues. When I started doing keto, a friend taught me how to make them properly, so I tried them again and now they are a semi-staple in my house.