Low-carb birthday ideas?
 

Hello again! I posted for advice a while back because I felt so awful on a low carb diet, and decided that I was eating too few carbs to function on them but too many to go into ketosis. I dropped fruit from my meal plan and while I still feel awful, it's nowhere near as bad as it was the first time, I think I am in ketosis this time. Still waiting for that fabulous boost of energy though . . .

Anyway, I have a new problem brewing. My birthday's in two weeks and while dinner's no problem, I don't know what about dessert. Everyone will expect a cake, but even 90% dark chocolate tastes sweet now. A cake I'd like would probably be too bitter for everyone else, a regular cake would kick me out of ketosis and I'd have to start all over again, and I detest artificial sweeteners.

So, how do you guys handle birthdays? (In my defense I did run a search, but it refused to search for "birthday" because the word was too common!) Do you make a low carb cake that everyone shares, or have a regular cake and just have a tiny slice? Or just not have anything after supper? And if that's the case how do you deal with the people who expected a cake?

I'd really appreciate some advice, I'm getting so stressed out and miserable trying to figure out what to do here. I'm probably not even going to stay on the ketogenic diet to add insult to injury, but I do want to give it the full three months it can take some people to adjust before I write it off so I can't even just have a cheat day here. Birthdays shouldn't be this much of a hassle. :(

A simple and easy to make cheesecake is not so far from "birthday cake" that others would think it odd. Say you wanted a different type of cake this year, it can be fancy with berries and whipped cream on top. Scatter birthday confetti around plate and on table. It takes a small amount of sweetener, I often cut down the amounts and use Swerve or similar.
Tons of cheesecake recipes here. http://forum.lowcarber.org/forumdisplay.php?f=41 Bawdy's cheesecake is popular.

I was going to suggest cheesecake, too. Also, if you keep the berries separate, with relatively little fuss you can have two bowls of berries, sweetened and unsweetened.

In our family we did birthday pies, so I'm not a traditionalist. My idea of dessert now is extra bacon. :)

But there are quite a few low carb desserts that are really good. My favorite is panna cotta - when I go all out I serve it with berries or rhubarb/strawberry sauce. Another really easy dessert is sugar free pudding (NOT instant - you need the kind that cooks & sub cream & water or a nut milk for the milk) & serve with whipped cream. I used to fold the whipped cream into the pudding after it had cooled a bit & put into glass trifle dishes. I don't get so fancy now, but I might since I finally got some pilsner glasses - they make great dessert dishes!

And then there are fat bombs. Oh my, some of those are delectable! Which is why I don't make them any more - too easy to overeat. But my favorite was the Lemon Cloud Fat Bomb.

I think that cheesecake idea and berries is really good. This year I skipped dessert for Valentines and my B-day. I never thought that was a possibility but I decided early in the year to not eat it just for tradition's sake.

If only a cheesecake had appeared!

Thank you everyone, sounds like cheesecake is by far the way to go here! :) Kind of funny, my knee jerk reaction was that I don't even like cheesecake because it isn't sweet enough, then I went hey, wait a minute . . . if nothing else it'll be interesting to see what I think of it now!

~Bonnie OFS

LMAO, I'm right there with you! I don't even want a cake really, but if someone bought me a pack of country maple bacon I'd be one happy camper! Too bad there's no way of making a cake out of bacon huh? :D

Oh boy, the lemon cloud fat bomb, does that seriously have straight up lemon juice with no sweetener at all? Do the other ingredients at least dilute it some? I can't imagine lemon juice with nothing to sweeten it, that stuff's crazy strong!

My version has sweetener. I can't imagine it without some sort of sweetening either, even tho I love the taste of lemons straight. :)

These days I probably wouldn't need as much sugar as before to handle lemon juice, in theory anyway! Lemon meringue pie is something I've really been craving lately, I should try making those fat bombs to see if they'll scratch that itch.

When I was looking up lemon cloud fat bomb recipes I discovered chocolate almond fat bombs, I think I'm making those first though!! I actually made something quite similar to use up my peanut butter, just without the extra fat. :)

Kristie has both an easy Key Lime Pie (can convert to Lemon) and a Never Fail cheesecake. Could also change the Vanilla in this recipe to lemon extract, adjust to taste.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fSvdbSCNWfI

Can search her YouTube channel or buy the Kindle of her recipe book (the Kindle links to the You Tubes if available ...the key lime in book is different from the one on YouTube, both easy.)

http://forum.lowcarber.org/showthread.php?t=470795

Thank you for the links JEY100! That cheesecake looks very non-threatening, most of the keto cheesecake recipes I've found have all kinds of weird ingredients, that one may well be the keeper. :)