Low Carb Cinnamon Sugar Crisps Con Chocolate

Churros are fried-dough pastries smothered in cinnamon and sugar. They’re often served covered in chocolate. I could probably recreate them using Carbalose flour and a deep fryer, but that’s way too much work. I could approximate the flavor without the effort if I baked low carb tortillas basted with butter and dipped in cinnamon and sweetener. However, those are still too carby and requires toasting in the oven.

There’s another low carb staple I can use and doesn’t require toasting at all. PORK RINDS!

Automatically adding captions to images on Blogger

One of the advantages of using the Blogger web interface is that knowledge of HTML isn’t required. Images that get added through the rich text interface are automatically inserted into a “div” container and hyperlinked so that clicking on them starts a slideshow of the page’s images. Captioned images are wrapped in a table. The user doesn’t need to know any of this since it’s done for them behind the scenes.

Good practice dictates that images have “alt” attributes assigned to them. The “alt” attribute is used in HTML and XHTML documents to specify alternative text (a.k.a. alt text) that is to be rendered when the element to which it is applied cannot be rendered. It is also used by “screen reader” software so that a person who is listening to the content of a webpage (for instance, a person who is blind) can interact with this element. Another attribute commonly used is “title.” Assigning this attribute allows for a pop-over to appear when the mouse pointer is hovering over an image. This can be useful way to provide supplemental information or context about the image that the author feels isn’t important enough to include as a caption.

The advent of touch interfaces makes hovering impossible. Mobile devices almost always implement a touch interface, so mobile users cannot access the title attribute of an object. To assist mobile users without putting an additional burden on a blogger, I’ve come up with a way to automatically append the title attribute text as a caption to images for mobile browsers. No intimate knowledge of HTML or JavaScript is necessary; however, this process will require changes to the Blogger template and style sheet.

Low Carb Drunken Parrot Ice Cream

I got a sample of Hawaiian Pineapple ice cream flavoring, but I struggled initially to think of interesting flavor combinations. Fear not, I’ve got some wild ideas for this flavor. This one isn’t too wacky. I found some “pineapple rum long-drink recipes” that inspired this ice cream mix.

Low Carb German Chocolate Cake Ice Cream

One of the ice cream flavorings I bought from a distributor was German Chocolate Cake. It’s normally only available in the larger quart size. From what I can tell, it’s a combination of the Chocolate Fudge flavoring with coconut extract added. You can recreate it by using a tablespoon of the LorAnn Oils Flavor Fountain Flavorings, Chocolate Fudge and coconut extract.

German chocolate cake frosting is a vanilla butter cream frosting with coconut flakes mixed in. I also added pecans since the cake includes them, too. The ice cream got solid quicker than usual since the flavoring thickened it considerably.

Low Carb “Skinny” Elvis Ice Cream

Sorry to all Elvis fans for not getting this done by January for Elvis’ birthday. Legend has it that Elvis adored peanut butter, banana and bacon sandwiches. If I were to do this as a regular sugar-based ice cream, I’d use caramelized bananas, but since this is low carb, I’ll just use banana ice cream flavoring. I’ll make a peanut butter swirl and add candied bacon, too. (Using peanut butter flavored ice cream and adding bananas isn’t going to work for obvious reasons.)

Low Carb Peanut Butter Curry Ice Cream

This is another low carb conversion of from the Humphry Slocombe Ice Cream Book. Adding curry to ice cream gives my wife the willies, but I welcome it with open arms. The origin story of this flavor is documented in the book:

The marriage of peanut butter and curry isn’t that much of a stretch. If you’ve ever had Thai food, you’ve had them together. But you may not have met them coupled in a dessert. This flavor was born as a cookie at Coi and perfected as ice cream at the shop.

Low Carb Avocado Ice Cream

This has got to be the easiest ice cream recipe in “The Perfect Scoop” by David Lebovitz. No cooking at all. Just toss the ingredients in a blender and churn. Avocados definitely sound like a strange ingredient for an ice cream, but this flavor works really well thanks to the sour cream and lime.