Bagels and butter

M's dietician alerted me to the existence of Fathead Dough, which is a low-carb dough using lots of cheese that can be used in keto diets for things like pizza dough. It also works for bagels, which are excellent vehicles for fats like cream cheese and butter. Fathead Dough recipes usually use almond flour but because of his nut allergies, there's a coconut flour version that I use for M. If you prefer almond flour, you need to use a little more than the amount of coconut flour called for below. Add enough butter to one of these and you've got yourself an all-in-one snack or meal that does decently well on the go.

Ingredients:

60g coconut flour

2T baking powder

250g shredded whole milk mozzarella cheese

55g cream cheese

3 large eggs, beaten

2T butter, melted

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 400°F and line a baking pan with parchment paper.

Mix coconut flour and baking powder in a small bowl. Set aside. Melt mozzarella cheese and cream cheese in microwave on high power for one minute. Stir. Place back in microwave on high for another minute. Stir.

Add in the beaten eggs, butter, and coconut flour mixture until a dough is formed. Dough should be a bit wet and sticky. If dry, try adding in another egg or more butter.

Divide dough into the weights called for in your calculator and roll out each piece, connecting the ends to form a bagel shape. Place bagels on a parchment paper lined baking sheet. Bake at 400°F for about 12-16 minutes or until lightly browned.

I freeze these in Ziploc bags and they reheat well. Actually, even if they're stored at room temperature, my son likes them much more when I warm them for a few seconds in the microwave before spreading on the butter. The dense texture of the cheese-and-coconut-flour dough benefits from the heating.

I find that I can make a 100 calorie 1.5:1 snack using 26g of dough and topping the bagel with 4g butter (2g per slice), or a 200 calorie 1.51:1 meal with 52g of dough and 8g of butter. You could do cream cheese instead of butter, but you'd need a *lot* of it to hit the ratio. You can do a little better using mascarpone cheese (Italian cream cheese, basically).