Personally I think Keto Chow is pretty awesome and works great for most situations. The major drawback I see is that it requires refrigeration and also a sealed container to transport it if you’re doing something like running around a conference or Disneyland – in which case you need to use an insulated container (which honestly works extremely well). But what do you do if you want to save space, reduce weight and (from what I can tell so far) not have to keep it refrigerated for the day?
Make some Keto Chow Bars/Brownies/Muffins.
The basics are: you’re adding eggs and baking soda to make it more substantial; and for the calories you’re using butter and peanut butter since both store well (and taste yummy). For my test I made 6 meals worth (2 days) so the pictures are double the recipe shown here (1 stick of butter instead of a half stick). I also used Rich Chocolate though you can easily use any of the other flavors – next time I’m doing it with snickerdoodle!
The one caveat with the bars: they are pretty dry – you’re going to want something to drink while you’re eating but water is easy to store, transport and locate on the fly.
This recipe has been updated with suggestions from the comments.
Keto Chow Bars/Brownies (REVISED)
Ingredients
- 150 grams Keto Chow we recommend using Chocolate or Chocolate Peanut Butter for this recipe
- 64 grams Adams Natural Peanut Butter 2 "servings" - it's far easier to weigh
- 56.5 grams salted butter half stick
- 2 large eggs
- 10 grams powdered erythritol (Swerve)
- 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/4 cup cold water
- 1/4 cup heavy cream
Instructions
- Add the liquid ingredients to a mixing bowl.
- Add dry ingredients and start mixing. I recommend using an electric hand mixer.
- Spoon into a pan and smooth it out. For best results use a cupcake pan.
- I baked it at 350 degrees for 15 minutes.
- For maximum freshness, put each "meal" worth into a bag and refrigerate the bag. My guess is that it will keep just like the brownies you are familiar with. Out of the fridge they should be good for 1-3 days.
If they’re dry is it possible to add more liquid or fat to compensate or does that mean they get goopy?
More fat will make it higher in calories. Not necessarily bad if that’s your aim. You might be able to get it more moist with more water though you have to put in the water before adding the dry ingredients or it’ll never mix up. Also not sure if it’ll cook well with the additional water.
Hi Chris, I’m just curious if you’ve looked into sugar alcohols for things like this?
They taste great imo, but, are they good for ketogenic diets?
I also found something called Isomaltooligosaccharide (IMO) which is somewhat new. Do you know if this is good for ketogenic diets either?
I love recipes like these that give me a “desert” without the sugar. I eat them daily, but I get a bit tired of the taste of sucralose and aspartame. I’m hoping IMO or other sugar alcohols are as safe a bet as artificial sweeteners.
The swerve sweetener is a sugar alcohol, mostly erythrotol. Check out the glycemic index table on http://www.mendosa.com/netcarbs.htm
A couple of things.
If you make a single batch, 25 minutes is WAY too long. Should be more like 12-14 minutes.
Second, I modified this by adding 1 extra egg, 1/8 cup heavy cream and 1/2 TBSP MCT Oil and baked it the aforementioned 12-14 minutes (closer to 12) and it was significantly more moist. Though it was a little denser. My kids all prefer the new version, and I do too. I think another minute or so might have been warranted, hence 12-14 minutes recommendation.
I’ll try that this weekend!
So I made these again and doubled the baking powder (and accidentally forgot the almond flour). Came out much cakier than my last batch which was a little dense. 14 minutes seems to be just about right (there was a thin undercooked layer in the middle of the pan, but the edges were clearly done, but not wet. I think the extra liquid might make the extra baking powder important.
One last follow-up on these . Um, these can stop you up. I was eating 2-4 blocks (About 400 calories worth) per day since before August 24th (so about four weeks) and in the last week or two started noticing trouble with bowel movements. They were HARD. I haven’t had hard stools since I started on Soylent over two year ago. I started adjusting all kinds of things and finally found that not eating these bars made a very fast difference. In fact on day two of no bars, I cleared out the backlog shall we say.
This probably means you should drink a LOT of water with them even if they don’t feel dry to you. I also think it might be possible to mix a LOT more liquid with them in the first place (make them more of a batter). In any case, just be careful folks. I wasn’t even consuming them for more than a 3rd of my calories and it happened to me in around three weeks.
Hi, when mixing brownie batter, never use a mixer and don’t over stir. Use a wooden spoon and stir only until ingredients are incorporated. Overmixing incorporates air, and leads to dryness.
Great to know!
I found these way to vitamin tasting. Not really sure why as I usually don’t even bother waiting on the vitamins to disolve when drinking them. Feels like this just has more vitamins per unit stuff, and that’s too much for me. May experiment with dissolving my keto Chow in liquid first and maybe using some oat fiber to add bulk.
The best way to get rid of the vitamin taste is to mix up the batter and stick it in the fridge for a few hours/overnight
This recipe needs some tweaking. I used the snickerdoodle, followed the recipe, and they are not very tasty. They were filling but the taste was all off. I felt like I was eating powder. I will finish them because I use so much of my keto chow in them but I’m not really enjoying them at all. I still love my keto chow though.
Thank you for your feedback.