Tips for Cooking for the Holidays and Keeping it Low Carb

As I've mentioned in my pre-Low Carb days, I was a baker. Big time.

And the holidays are the only time I indulge in my uncanny ability to make perfect pastries, cookies and pies.

Holiday cookies are a huge pitfall because I like to dough sample. Which is not good. So here's my strategy for still pleasing my family, enjoying the holidays, and keeping it low carb.

1. All cookie dough is made in advance and frozen. This cuts down on batter snacking
because I'm not baking cookies for four hours and constantly sampling the dough. Instead, I form the dough into balls and freeze. When it's time for cookies, I just pull what I need from the freezer and bake, no dough sampling because it's frozen.

This has worked really well on multiple fronts. It keeps me low carb and allows me to work ahead of the holiday so I don't spend four days straight cooking. No lie, before I froze my cookies, I would be up until midnight baking.

2.Eat. Don't bake when hungry and keep a low carb snack you enjoy handy while baking. Any time you go for the dough, redirect your hand to your 'allowed' snack. Something chewy like beef jerky that takes a while to process is good.

3.Use sugar free mints and contrary flavors to reduce temptation. Ever sample gingersnap dough after brushing your teeth? Blech. Use the blech factor to your advantage.

4.Make something low carb. As you expand your low carb cooking repertoire you'll find some sweet treats that are low carb. Include those in your holiday baking menu. Always always always have a 'safe' food at the ready so you don't go overboard on all the holiday goodies. And there's no reason your safe food has to suck. Some LC sweets you might like:

-sugar free buckeyes
-sugar free peanut butter cookies
-dark chocolate mousse
-almond flour cookies
-almond flour muffins
-dark chocolate (if you don't have time to cook, this is always a good standby)

These are all things non Low Carb people would enjoy, no one has to know and you may be surprised at how popular the Low Carb goodies are.

What do you make for the holidays now that you're low carbing? I've got so many menus and recipes lined up to try, I don't know if even half of them will get made and posted on the blog, but I'm going to try.