Super Easy Low-Carb Appetizer for Your New Year’s Eve Party
December 30, 2009 by admin
In case you have been living under a rock, or taking nutrition classes at a University, then you know that when it comes to fat-loss and health low-carb wins hands down. I’ve written about that here, here, here, here, here, here and a whole lot of other places.
Real life award winning dieticians. This is what the food pyramid looks like on a human body.
Your New Year’s Eve party is right around the corner, so I wanted to give you something easy that you could make that would be both tasty and helpful with getting a head start on your New Year’s Resolutions.
When you go low-carb one of the things that you miss the mot is crunchy stuff like crackers. Here is a great alternative that I love with Baba Ganoush (a great, lower carb alternative to hummus).
These are from my birthday which was the 26th. Would you believe that I just turned 24?
Low-Carb Cheese Crackers
Ingredients
4 slices (approx 1 oz each) cheddar cheese (pre-sliced from a grocery store – I’ve used several brands and they all seem to work fine.)
Parchment paper
Directions
1. Take cheese and fold into quarters (you end up with 4 pieces of cheese that are about ¼ the size of the original slice) and place on baking sheet that has been covered with a sheet of parchment paper.
Your cheese will look like this after you fold it into fourths
2. Preheat oven to 400 F, and put cheese in oven when the oven heats to 400.
3. Bake for 8min
For a crisper cracker – leave the cheese on the parchment paper for an hour or more to help it dry out. The longer it sits out the dryer it gets and the crisper your cracker.
Nutrition
Makes 4 servings of 4 crackers
Regular cheese crackers – 18g net carb per 1oz serving
These cheese crackers – .5g net carb per 1 oz serving (4 crackers)
Josef Brandenburg is 2010, Washington, DC Personal Trainer of the Year Nominee for both Personal Fitness Professional Magazine and The Washington, DC Fitness Association, and author of “The Body You Want”. He shows normal people with hectic lives and average genetics how to create the bodies they want in the time they actually have. To find out more about the 7-Day Free Trial click here. You can also pick up a FREE copy of his brand new CD – “Why Eat Less and Exercise More is The Worst Advice Ever” here.
If you’re 24 y/o, I’m the Queen of Romania!
If you\’re 24 y/o, I\’m the Queen of Romania!
Joe,
You gotta proofread before you post. Aside from the spelling errors, I can’t make heads or tails how to make this. Do you mean a block of cheddar cheese? Is it something that comes pre-sliced? What’s the original thickness? What do you use to slice it so thin? Is there a brand of cheddar cheese that you can recommend?
Joe,
You gotta proofread before you post. Aside from the spelling errors, I can\’t make heads or tails how to make this. Do you mean a block of cheddar cheese? Is it something that comes pre-sliced? What\’s the original thickness? What do you use to slice it so thin? Is there a brand of cheddar cheese that you can recommend?
Josef – I tried these (after your 20-something birthday!) and ended up with one solid sheet of melted cheese … which I cut into pieces after it cooled, stacked the slices and reheated. Still not as good as yours, but at least an approximation. I think the idea is to have a pretty hefty chunk of cheese for each ‘cracker,’ with adequate spacing between them on the parchment, and check after a few minutes. I only baked mine for 4 min. and it was too long. Cheeses differ in moisture content which would effect cooking time. Maybe put up a photo of what you started with and another of what they looked like on the parchment. They were truly delicious, so I need to master this!
Grant, does your wife know you’re a queen:-)?
I used pre-sliced cheese from the store. I also added a picture of what it looks like before you put it in the oven.
I make these with grated parmesan cheese (not the finely grated stuff from the can, but the stuff grated either with a box grater or pre-grated from the store) and instead of parchment use a silpat so things don’t stick, but it is the same idea. For the cheddar, you want the slices to be fairly thin. For the parmesan you simply put a silver-dollar sized amount on the baking sheet in a thin coat (not a giant pile). It is easy, and they are great.
My favorite variation is to use asiago cheese slices from Trader Joe’s…they have the right moisture content…and microwave them for 45 seconds on parchment paper, one slice at a time. Also great as “crackers” are pepperoni chips…placed on a paper towel and microwaved for 45 seconds. Both are great with dips and hummus.