3.25 from 4 votes

Banana Nut Breakfast Muffins

The final product are these gorgeous golden brown muffins! They smelled so delicious they didn’t last long enough for me to take the pictures, I had to dig in! As you can see, these muffins resemble the texture of a german pancake, making them perfect for breakfast. ;) Bon appetit!

Prep Time5

Cook Time26

Total Time31

Course: Breakfast, Snacks

Keyword: Banana, Keto Chow

Keto Chow Flavor: Banana

Servings: muffins

Calories: 204.8kcal

Author: Victoria Jensen

Ingredients

8 oz cream cheese
8 large eggs
4 tablespoons salted butter
2 servings Banana Keto Chow (or 2 scoops)
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 cup chopped pecans

Instructions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a mixing bowl, melt butter and cream cheese.
Combine and add eggs. Be careful not to cook the eggs from the heat of the butter.
In a separate bowl, mix protein powder, baking powder, cinnamon. Pour dry ingredients into wet; combine with a hand mixer until completely mixed. At first, the batter will look thin and too liquidy, but because of the xanthan gum in the protein powder, it will thicken up after a couple of minutes).
Stir in pecans.
Pour into muffin baking tray and bake at 350 degrees for 22-26 minutes. (I have a convection oven and after 24 minutes they were golden brown.)
The final product are these gorgeous golden brown muffins! They smelled so delicious they didn’t last long enough for me to take the pictures, I had to dig in! (If you notice the size difference between the two muffins on the bottom left side and the rest it’s because they’re lacking baking powder/soda- I did a little experiment to see how important it really was and obviously it made a HUGE difference!)

Notes

As you can see, these muffins resemble the texture of a german pancake, making them perfect for breakfast ;) Bon appétit!

Nutrition Facts

Banana Nut Breakfast Muffins

Serving Size

70 g

Amount per Serving

Calories

204.8

% Daily Value*

Fat

17.3

g

27

%

Saturated Fat

7.7

g

48

%

Trans Fat

0.38

g

Polyunsaturated Fat

1.88

g

Monounsaturated Fat

5.89

g

Cholesterol

155.59

mg

52

%

Sodium

366.36

mg

16

%

Potassium

344.51

mg

10

%

Carbohydrates

3.5

g

1

%

Fiber

1.61

g

7

%

Sugar

1.36

g

2

%

Sugar Alcohol

0.01

g

Net Carbs

1.89

g

Protein

10.1

g

20

%

Vitamin A

543.49

IU

11

%

Vitamin C

22.84

mg

28

%

Calcium

186.76

mg

19

%

Iron

0.99

mg

6

%

* Percent Daily Values are based on a 2000 calorie diet.

Nutrition

Photos by Sarah DeYoung Photography

START COOKING

By Victoria Jensen|2021-02-02T14:23:34-07:00November 1st, 2017|Categories: Recipes, Keto Chow Recipes|Tags: recipe, Keto Chow, breakfast, Banana, muffins, banana nut muffins|6 Comments

Keto Chow 2.0 update – protein should be shipping tomorrow
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Keto Chow 2.0 update – protein should be shipping tomorrow

Keto Chow

Keto Chow 2.0 update – protein should be shipping tomorrow

This entry is part 81 of 131 in the series Ketogenic Diet

OK, here’s the short version: manufacturing should start April 5th. I might have limited supplies of 2.0 by April 14.

On Friday I went to visit the manufacturing facility we’re using for Keto Chow 2.0 to pick some (unrelated) stuff up. While there, I learned that the Whey Protein Isolate distributor didn’t want to ship the Isolate until either (a) the Concentrate was already returned, or (b) the Isolate was paid for up-front and they would take their sweet time issuing a credit for the Concentrate. How much was the isolate? Roughly half the total cost and I had paid half already back in November. So, now I’ve paid for the whole thing! (seriously, let’s get this GOING!!!!).

I just talked to the manufacturing facility – they said the protein should ship tomorrow and take 5+ business days to arrive. Once it does, they have to pull a sample for testing (gotta make sure it doesn’t have any e-Coli, salmonella or other bad stuff) and then the fun begins. They’re planning on clearing the schedule so they can make it as quickly as possible. With any luck, we’ll be getting some as early as Friday, April 14 – if not then Monday, April 17th. They’re going to be making Chocolate first (crap, that means I need to drive the pallet of Peanut Flour down to the place that’s packaging the Chocolate Peanut Butter pretty soon). Not sure if they’ll be running week and sample sizes concurrently on different machines or what. We may be having a rather exciting next few weeks.

In related news, I have the second round of Keto Chow 2.0 already on order. I’d rather have way too much for a month or two then run out!

By Chris|2017-03-27T15:48:03-06:00March 27th, 2017|Categories: Keto Chow|Tags: ketochow2.0, Whey Protein Isolate, recipe, Keto Chow, flavors|0 Comments

Some thoughts on MLMs and poor “meal replacements” that are just snacks
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Some thoughts on MLMs and poor “meal replacements” that are just snacks

Ketogenic Diet

Some thoughts on MLMs and poor “meal replacements” that are just snacks

This entry is part 79 of 131 in the series Ketogenic Diet

In case you hadn’t noticed, Keto Chow is not distributed via multi-level marketing. There aren’t any “memberships” or other tomfoolery and you don’t have to trick family and friends into hearing a sales promotion to get a discount. I can very happily say that I have never once bought into a MLM and there’s no way I’d ever allow this company to engage in something as disingenuous. I think John Oliver did a fairly good job of summing up everything that’s wrong with Multi-Level Marketing.

What spurred this rant? This morning I was kicking around /r/keto and saw a promoted post for Soylent. Thought that was weird so I checked the “promoted posts” for the subreddit to see if I was getting that ad based on my reddit behavior or if Soylent were actually targeting /r/keto – it’s the former. But I did see an ad for “Wakaya BulaFIT KetoFUEL” – looked it over to see what it was (gotta check out the “competitors”). Much like the junk Pruvit KETO//OS product, this is another MLM backed quick-fix “Keto” for the masses. Finding the actual nutrition information was extraordinarily difficult – it’s nowhere on the main page or in the shopping cart where you can buy 30 servings for US$115! Ultimately I found it in their marketing flyer they give to the “Independent Ambassadors” who can buy it for $85 if they get “preferred” status.

So what do you get for that $115? 30 servings of a 250 calorie “protein” drink with some powdered MCT oil. The ingredients aren’t even remotely ketogenic. #1 ingredient? Dehydrated Sweet Cream, which I know from my own analysis is borderline keto at best. The label says 0g of carbs per 4g serving but it’s actually 0.48g. Anyhow… then you have some egg powder, some whey protein concentrate and then comes the MCT oil powder. I looked into adding MCT oil powder to Keto Chow but decided the economics didn’t make sense. It’s cheaper for everyone if you just buy Quest MCT oil powder off Amazon. Now here’s the funny thing: in the BulaFIT KetoFUEL they didn’t even bother to use soluble corn fiber to “powder” the oil, instead, they used maltodextrin. Maltodextrin is starch, it’s glucose molecules joined in chains to form a polymer and your body rapidly turns it straight into glucose, spiking your blood sugar and hindering ketosis. Oddly, they also used some acacia gum but show 0g of fiber on the panel.

250 calories for $3.83. Barely any electrolytes, 5g of carbs, only 12g of protein. Could you drink one as a “meal”? I guess – 250 calories isn’t going to keep you full for very long. Honestly, you’d do better to Intermittent Fast and then eat a proper meal. Could you replace all your meals with this product? Absolutely not (and 1800 calories of this stuff would cost you $27 and be 36g of carbs). It’s not designed as a true “replacement” for a meal, it’s more of a snack and if that’s what you’re looking for then go grab some string cheese ($11.09 for 60 at Costco). You’ll get 240 calories if you eat 3. You’ll end up with around 1g of net carbs, more protein, similar fat, AND it’ll only cost you $0.55! And it’s cheese… time to get me some more cheese.

By Chris|2017-03-16T07:32:34-06:00March 16th, 2017|Categories: Ketogenic Diet|Tags: science, MLM, Pruvit, BulaFit, Oil, recipe, ketogenic, Coconut Oil|0 Comments

“Low Carb Show” Podcast Interview, Keto Chow 2.0 update
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“Low Carb Show” Podcast Interview, Keto Chow 2.0 update

Keto Chow, Ketogenic Diet

“Low Carb Show” Podcast Interview, Keto Chow 2.0 update

This entry is part 76 of 131 in the series Ketogenic Diet

Mark from the Low-Carb Show, contacted me a few weeks ago to see if I would like to do an interview for his podcast and the recording has just been posted. His wife sent him down the rabbit hole of Ketogenic Meal Replacement drinks and he found Keto Chow, ordered some, and enjoyed it enough to get me on his podcast to talk about Keto Chow, the progress of Keto Chow 2.0, Domain Squatters, Mac&Cheese, and a bunch of other stuff! I reference a post about Arches National Park in the podcast, I’ll save you the hassle of finding it: “Vacationing for a week (mostly) on DIY soylent” (you can see more of my Dad’s stuff here) – this is from about a month before I started doing Keto and was still doing “People Chow” which was primarily corn masa.

I keep telling my teenagers I’m “Internet Famous” – they still just roll their eyes.

It’s about time for an update on Keto Chow 2.0, wouldn’t you agree? This week we finally tackled the funny aftertaste problem for realsies. The Whey Protein Isolate we started experimenting with significantly reduced the bad flavor (so it was essentially non-existent)… for a few hours. If you tasted the mix anywhere from 30 minutes to 3-4 hours after mixing it would taste fine. For many people, this would be sufficient, but I like to mix up 3-4 days worth at a time so I can just grab them out of the fridge. I’ve said it before: I’m not going to sell a product I wouldn’t use (and enjoy using!), I’m pretty much my worst customer =). The time delay aspect was particularly vexing and pointed to some sort of ingredient interaction causing the issue. I got samples of each ingredient, mixed them up in water, both alone and in certain combinations. Straight potassium citrate isn’t particularly nice tasting.

Anyhow, the Isolate all by itself did not have any weird flavor, nothing really did… until I tasted the Enzyme Blend + Whey Protein combination. I discovered the flavor anomaly! The enzyme blend alone was fine, the breakdown of the lactose in the whey by the enzymes was most decidedly the problem and it got worse over 2 days. On Thursday we had new samples made that omitted the enzyme blend. I’m super happy to report that all of the flavors now taste exactly the way they’re supposed to, and with the “200 mesh” xanthan gum you can mix it without a blender and get good results – everything is coming up Milhouse! At least in KC 2.0.0 there isn’t going to be an enzyme blend. For most this won’t be an issue, but if you’re lactose intolerant you will want to consider using Lactaid or another enzyme blend. There are 0.58g of lactose in each serving of Keto Chow 2.0 thanks to the Whey Protein Isolate being super low in carbs. Adding 1/2 cup of heavy cream brings the lactose up to 3.31g.

This coming week we’ll make some bigger sample batches so I can start doing more extensive short-to-medium term tests as we gear up for full-on production; which I now expect to be starting (maybe) March 6 or later, not sure which flavors we’ll be doing first. The plan is that they’ll be mixing up all of the ingredients except the color and flavor in their giant mixer to make a base powder, then they can do smaller batches for the individual flavors. Anyhow, I’m super excited about the prospects of getting this going!

On a final note, this week I added a “Recipes and Flavor Hacks” page, check it out.

By Chris|2017-02-25T10:49:43-07:00February 25th, 2017|Categories: Keto Chow, Ketogenic Diet|Tags: Keto Chow, flavors, nutrition, ketochow2.0, Whey Protein Isolate, experience, recipe|3 Comments

Update on Keto Chow 2.0 – another delay, but there’s hope!
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Update on Keto Chow 2.0 – another delay, but there’s hope!

Ketogenic Diet, Keto Chow, Future Foods

Update on Keto Chow 2.0 – another delay, but there’s hope!

To recap for those who don’t live and breathe this stuff:

I’m in the final stages of having Keto Chow produced at a contract manufacturer.
Keto Chow 2.0 differs from Keto Chow 1.9 on the protein/flavor/sweetener – I’m not able to get Dymatize Elite in 500KG batches so by necessity we have to get our own stuff to replace it. The most obvious difference will be the flavoring in KC2.0 will be our own stuff.

Anyhow, we ran into a problem with the manufacturing. I had the co-packer make me some new test batches and the flavors came back really weird. Initially, I thought it was the potassium chloride we added but after extensive testing, it turned out to be a problem in the protein powder. The initial tests they did were with a random equivalent protein powder and the new samples were straight from the bulk powder they purchased for our batches. We’ve gone back and tried some different flavoring and some bitter masking agents but to no avail.

I’m not going to sell a product I don’t love. It has to have a “wow, that was really good, I want more!” going for it or it’s not going to be released.

So, as of today, we’re going to use a different protein powder from a different manufacturer. It’s likely this will add some to the cost, I’m hoping it’s less than $1-2 and we’re still aiming to have KC2.0 cost less than KC1.9. This means that Keto Chow 2.0 is going to be delayed. If we can find a direct drop-in replacement for the protein powder it may be as little as a week before we get things going.

We’re coming up on almost a year since I decided to start this endeavor – I hope we can be shipping 2.0 well before Fed 15th.

Update!

This morning we headed down to the manufacturer to work on the problem. We brought along a Keto Chow 1.9 rich chocolate in powder form, a bag of Dymatize Rich Chocolate for comparison, and a blender bottle of mixed Chocolate Peanut Butter. He had complained that it didn’t taste very good and he didn’t feel confident evaluating the mixes so when he had the Chocolate Peanut Butter (with the heavy cream) he was astonished in the extreme “Oh wow, that’s actually really good” – yep that’s the goal! We did a bunch of various tests combining different stuff together but the most telling test was when we tasted the plain whey protein in water… and the bad taste was there! After that, he said he was going to go back to the distributor and get a refund and/or exchange it for a different protein. He said the protein guys may send out a food scientist to work on the problem but ideally, we may have a solution (maybe) quickly.

By Chris|2017-01-30T14:34:41-07:00January 30th, 2017|Categories: Ketogenic Diet, Keto Chow, Future Foods|Tags: ketogenic, Keto Chow, flavors, ketochow2.0, Whey Protein Isolate, ingredient costs, Prices, recipe|2 Comments

New Fish Pills, Temporary change to Rich Chocolate & Peanut Butter
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New Fish Pills, Temporary change to Rich Chocolate & Peanut Butter

Keto Chow

New Fish Pills, Temporary change to Rich Chocolate & Peanut Butter

We finally got our custom packaged fish pills in! We were down to a single bag of the Costco ones so it was perfect timing. The new pills come in a Keto Chow labeled bottle and have better nutrition numbers for DHA and EPA Omega 3s. You can still buy fish pills from another source if you like but you’ll need at least 1300mg per day of omega 3s, most fish pills you find require 5 or 6 pills per day to reach that level, these ones are concentrated Omega 3 so you only need 2 per day.

We’re experiencing difficulties getting the Dymatize Elite Rich Chocolate right now. It’s a temporary problem and I expect that we’ll have the normal stuff soon (we’re just waiting on shipping thanks to the impending holidays). In the interim, we’re using Optimum Nutrition Gold Standard 100% Whey “Extreme Milk Chocolate”. It comes quite close to the same flavor but it is slightly different, tastes a little like the chocolate fudge we have – though not much. It’s a higher quality protein, and it’s significantly more expensive, but we’re going to leave the price of the Rich Chocolate and Chocolate Peanut Butter the same. You’ll be able to tell if you got one of these packages by the 1.9.1 version number on the package.

By Chris|2016-12-23T11:01:22-07:00December 23rd, 2016|Categories: Keto Chow|Tags: recipe, Keto Chow, flavors|0 Comments

One step closer to Keto Chow 2.0
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One step closer to Keto Chow 2.0

Keto Chow

One step closer to Keto Chow 2.0

Let’s see how the progress towards Keto Chow 2.0 is going:

Found a place to make it.
Had a custom vitamin/mineral pre-mix manufactured.
Found a protein powder I can get by the truckload.
Found suitable flavors.
Figured out how to get Chocolate Peanut Butter manufactured.
Got pricing for contract manufacturing.
Created artwork for sample packages.
Ordered Sample packaging.
Received vitamin/mineral pre-mix.
Delivered Pre-mix to contract manufacturer.
Created artwork for week bulk bags.

Got pricing for printed bulk bags.
Ordered bags for week packages.
Waited a couple weeks for manufacturing.
Received the finished Keto Chow 2.0

Today I delivered the vitamin pre-mix to the contract manufacturer. People asked why I bought a F-350, precisely for this: we were able to load a 1500lb pallet full of stuff into the back and drive it down. Easy-peasy.

I also picked up the (hopefully) formulation of coloring (had to make banana yellow and strawberry pink!). Very few steps remain for me to do before full-scale production begins. Best-case scenario: we could have it mid-December.

By Chris|2016-11-23T16:50:16-07:00November 23rd, 2016|Categories: Keto Chow|Tags: Keto Chow, ketochow2.0, recipe|0 Comments

The Vitamins and Minerals for Keto Chow 2.0 has arrived – also the “sample” packaging is complete
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The Vitamins and Minerals for Keto Chow 2.0 has arrived – also the “sample” packaging is complete

Keto Chow

The Vitamins and Minerals for Keto Chow 2.0 has arrived – also the “sample” packaging is complete

We’re another major step closer to having Keto Chow 2.0 launched. the 2200 lb. (1000 kg) shipment of custom vitamin and mineral pre-mix we will be using has arrived. We had planned on using the 500kg shipment we got a while ago to launch KC2.0 but we’ve used up nearly half of that making KC1.9. Now we can make a bunch!

In other news, I ordered the packaging for the sample/individual meals, check it out:

Pricing isn’t finalized yet but the plan is that 3 of the new samples will cost less than a 3-meal “day” pack currently costs. You may notice that one of the flavors is missing: Chocolate Peanut Butter. We will be making chocolate peanut butter (whoah there, keep your shirt on!) – but the facility that will be packaging all of the samples and most of the week packs has an employee who is allergic to peanuts. The short of it is: we’re having a different facility make the Chocolate Peanut Butter BUT they aren’t able to make stick-packs as large as we need =( Until we figure out a solution, we’ll have week packs of peanut butter, but no samples. Honestly it’s not a huge loss for samples, it’s the best flavor available: you’re going to like it! It is, however, a downer for portability: no individual chocolate peanut butter meals.

By Chris|2019-05-23T08:19:44-06:00November 21st, 2016|Categories: Keto Chow|Tags: recipe, Keto Chow, flavors, ketochow2.0|0 Comments

Finalized nutrition and ingredients for Keto Chow 2.0 (which might be here before the New Year)

This entry is part 68 of 131 in the series Ketogenic Diet

Previously I reported finalizing the ingredients for Keto Chow 2.0… and then I decided to add potassium. Well, now it’s not only finalized for reals this time, I have the nutrition information available. Head on over to https://old.ketochow.xyz/nutrition/ and you can get a glimpse into the future!

The impetus for doing this now was needing the labels for the Keto Chow 2.0 packaging. I’m hoping I’ll have that over at the printer early next week.

By Chris|2016-11-10T11:55:59-07:00November 10th, 2016|Categories: Keto Chow|Tags: Keto Chow, nutrition, ketochow2.0, recipe|0 Comments

Heavy Cream Powder, still not really suitable for Ketosis
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Heavy Cream Powder, still not really suitable for Ketosis

Ketogenic Diet, Keto Chow

Heavy Cream Powder, still not really suitable for Ketosis

This entry is part 67 of 131 in the series Ketogenic Diet

UPDATE: I have more complete information available now, check it out!

So this is something that has been asked a lot: is there a powdered cream that can be used with Keto Chow? People would like it for the convenience factor of being able to just add water. I explored this earlier with a different product – and I’m drawing the same conclusion on this one: not suitable (in my opinion).

The product in question is “Anthony’s Heavy Cream Powder” – it’s available on Amazon for $12.99 a lb. The Nutrition label shows 0g of carbs per 4g serving because anything under 0.5 gets rounded down to 0. I contacted the manufacturer and was able to get a more accurate number: 0.48g per 4g serving. I put that into my recipe calculator and came up with this handy comparison showing the powdered form vs what it would cost to get heavy cream by the quart from Wal-Mart:

calories/day	form	amount	cost	carbs from cream	final net carbs
1300 calories	powder	109g	$3.12	13.1	19.4
1800 calories	powder	176g	$5.04	21.1	27.4
2000 calories	powder	203g	$5.81	24.4	30.7
1300 calories	liquid	238ml	$1.42	6.6	12.9
1800 calories	liquid	383ml	$2.28	10.7	17
2000 calories	liquid	441ml	$2.63	12.3	18.6

So, if you use the powder, you are going to have a really hard time staying in ketosis unless that’s all you’re eating all day since it has 2x the net carbs as the liquid version. You’re also going to be paying a lot for the convenience, about twice as much. Don’t get me wrong: it is possible to use this for the primary calorie and fat source of Keto Chow and thereby have a powder that just needs water (and refrigeration); it’s just not very practical.

By Chris|2020-04-15T16:49:37-06:00November 1st, 2016|Categories: Ketogenic Diet, Keto Chow|Tags: recipe, ketogenic, Keto Chow, nutrition|3 Comments