Ketogenic Breakfast Brownie Recipe

For a quick easy breakfast, we had crumbly brownies made with almond flour. While they were maybe just a little too plain, they were filling and healthy.

2 cups almond flour
3 tablespoons cocoa powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
coarse sea salt
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 teaspoon honey
2 eggs
1 tablespoon coconut cream
2 tablespoons canned coconut milk

Mix all of the dry ingredients. Add everything else while stirring.
Place in a greased brownie pan. Bake on 350 degrees for 25 minutes.
These did come out kind of dry so I would suggest adding a little almond milk and serving with a little honey.

These brownies are really just another way of eating nuts. We have been roasting cashews, pecans, macadamia nuts, almonds and walnuts daily while the kids are home on spring break. The nuts are a great substitute for the high starch offerings that schools inflict on vegetarian kids. But we were getting bored with nuts. The kids made an amusing nut-based pancake the other day but it was not their best work.

The above recipe is probably a little higher in protein than a true ketogenic diet would be but I hate to call them "paleo" since the paleo trend encourages unprecedented amounts of animal products. I did add eggs to this but they are optional and I prefer to keep vegan. I still firmly believe in the China Study and the downsides of an overexposure to animal proteins, especially casein. Factory farming, inhumane animal treatment, and downright disgusting animal feed leads to quite a different product from any animal running around in the wild.

Quick definitions:
Paleo: a dietary trend purportedly based on how people ate in the paleolithic era (an era lasting from 2.6 million years ago to 10,000 years ago and including the years during which humans evolved). It professes to include high quality fats and protein, non-starchy vegetables and fruit. While it is probably a huge improvement over processed food-based American diets, it is often misinterpreted and its followers eat all sorts of meat with reckless abandon. While times have changed and the quality of meat is questionable, eating like a  hunter-gatherer in theory is better than eating like a gatherer of packaged junk food. Ratios recommended by the average paleo diet: Protein: 30%; Low glycemic carbs: 40% Fat: 30% Paleo diets are a new trend and seemed to supplant the Atkins diet popular in the 1990s used for weight loss but sometimes associated with the side effects of digesting large quantities of low quality meat. The paleo trend when done properly does utilize fresh food and especially fresh vegetables overlooked by the Atkins trend.

Ketogenic: Ketogenic diets suggest that fat is superior to protein and that excess protein should be limited. Protein: 20%; Low glycemic carbs: 10%; high quality fats: 70%. Ketogenic diets have been around a while, named in 1924 and used for disease prevention. Ketogenic diets are strongly encouraged for those with a variety of illnesses including cancer, diabetes, epilepsy, alzheimer's and other neurological problems. Ketogenics are based on the theory of reaching ketosis where fat rather than glucose is used for fuel.