Karen's Adventures in Cooking: Primal Twice Baked Caulifower

I’m starting a new cooking feature here to catalogue my cooking hits and misses.

I also want to organize and clean out my growing pile of cookbooks and cooking magazines. So I’ll be trying a few recipes from each one to see if it’s worth keeping on the shelf.

My first recipe is from SparkRecipes – Primal Twice Baked Cauliflower. Kind of a weird name but I thought it would be a good recipe to kick off 2016 since that’s when everyone is clamoring for healthy recipes after months of indulging in holiday goodies.

This recipe was easy peasy! You microwave the cauliflower, then pulse it in your food processor until it’s a whipped, mashed potato consistency. I was kind of surprised how much it looked like real mashed potato.

Then you stir in your usual twice baked potato additions – in this case a little butter, low fat yogurt, reduced fat sour cream, reduced fat cheese, garlic and bacon bits, Pop it in the oven to bake – then broil for a few minutes and voila!

Verdict: I love anything veggie so this wasn’t a hard sell for me. I knew I was going to like it but my husband is not a fan of cauliflower so I let him be the judge. He liked it! Like, REALLY liked it - went back for a second serving. I call this one a success! It wasn’t *quite* mashed potatoes but it didn’t taste like boring cauliflower either. It had a great, twice baked, mashed potato like, texture and the sour cream/yogurt added a nice tang. And of course cheese! You can’t go wrong with cheese.

Even though this is intended as a healthy substitute for twice baked potatoes, I thought it was delicious and stands on it’s own. I will definitely be making it again.

*My adjustments. I cooked up my own bacon instead of using bacon bits and used a 24oz Corelle baking dish instead of the four ramekins. I used full fat cheese because…c’mon! Also my head of cauliflower seemed a little small so I used the whole head instead of half as the recipe called for.

I think I might try a different cheese the next time. Maybe Blue cheese. Mmmmmm…

Tips:
Freeze extra bacon in serving size packages so you can pull out just what you need. Here’s a tutorial but I’m lazy so I just stick it in a bag rather than go through those steps. lol

Cook bacon in the oven! This is the best way to cook bacon – each slice is perfect every time. Add a little brown sugar sprinkled on top if you want to make it a little fancy.