Crustless Asparagus Quiche & 10th Anniversary of Low-Carb, So Simple

Meet your new favorite recipe for a springtime brunch! And not only for brunch, this gorgeous and easy Crustless Asparagus Quiche also makes an awesome breakfast, lunch, or dinner alike. Delicious and satisfying, it needs only 5 common ingredients and is super easy to make. Thanks to cream cheese, this quiche is rich, and a pinch of lemon pepper wakes up the tastebuds in your mouth.

How to make this Crustless Asparagus Quiche

This is another really simple yet incredibly delicious recipe that is quick to whip up. Just mix cream cheese, eggs, and salt and transfer into a baking dish. Top with asparagus spears and some lemon pepper, and bake. Super-duper easy!

So, nothing complicated there. Let’s take a look at how to prepare this gorgeous quiche.

Take 1 bunch (1 lb = 450 g) asparagus.

Wash it and pat dry.

Take an asparagus spear and bend it until it snaps.

Like this.

Continue with the rest of the asparagus spears. Discard the hard stems and put the tops aside for a while.

Combine 8 oz (230 g) full-fat cream cheese…

…2 organic free-range eggs…

…and 1/2 teaspoon (or to taste) natural salt like Himalayan salt or unrefined sea salt.

Whisk…

…until smooth.

Pour the mixture into a 6 × 9-inch (15 × 23 cm) ceramic or glass baking dish.

Level the surface.

Here we go.

Take the trimmed asparagus spears (the tops) and place them next to each other on the quiche batter.

Like this.

Take 1/2 teaspoon (or to taste) lemon pepper and sprinkle it evenly on top.

Ready for oven.

Bake at 350 °F (175 °C) for about 30 minutes, or until the quiche is done and the asparagus is crisp-tender.

Remove from the oven.

Serve hot. I love to drizzle good quality extra-virgin olive oil on top.

Yum!

 

How I came up with this easy keto quiche recipe

Crustless quiches are no-brainers. That’s why coming up with this recipe really didn’t need laborious pondering and brainwork. I just had got a thought of asparagus in a crustless quiche, and the rest was straightforward.

I knew I needed eggs and cream cheese for the quiche batter, asparagus on top, and some salt to season the dish.

However, there was still room for one ingredient to fill the 5-ingredient quota. That was obviously going to be some spice.

After quick thinking of fitting spices, I thought lemon pepper would be just the perfect complement for my Crustless Asparagus Quiche: it would lend wonderful lemon flavor to accompany asparagus and also a gentle piquancy from pepper for a mouthwatering zest.

Now, when I got all the ingredients, it was time to think of the measures. I took a baking dish that I thought would accommodate the bunch of asparagus. Based on some educated guestimates, I also calculated the needed amounts for cream cheese and eggs as well as for the seasonings.

I was so sure that my quiche would be perfect (well, you simply cannot go wrong with these great ingredients!), so I took the photos while preparing my first experiment.

Lo and behold, the quiche turned out wonderful! It looked gorgeous and tasted awesome. Rich cream cheese was beautifully accompanying light asparagus. Lemon pepper lent a tangy and piquant kick that complemented the mellow flavors in a perfect way. I was extremely satisfied with the recipe.

Here’s the recipe for you to enjoy:

Nutrition information	In total	Per serving if 4 servings in total
Protein	38.8 g	9.7 g
Fat	70.1 g	17.5 g
Net carbs	13.9 g	3.5 g
kcal	859 kcal	215 kcal

 

Tips for variations

The easiest way to vary this dish is to switch the seasoning. Instead of lemon pepper, you can try Cajun seasoning, BBQ seasoning, chili powder, red pepper flakes, or just simply cracked black pepper.

Alternatively, you can mix Sriracha sauce or another hot sauce in the quiche batter. Dried herbs lend more flavor and are best also mixed in the batter. If you use fresh herbs, add them after baking as they might lose their flavor if baked.

You can make the quiche even more satisfying by topping it with crumbled bacon before baking. As asparagus and eggs are a satisfying combo, you can top the baked quiche with chopped hard-boiled eggs.

For all cheese lovers out there: add 1/4 cup (60 ml) freshly grated Parmesan on top of the quiche before baking. Alternatively, you can mix some shredded cheese (like mozzarella or even sharper cheese like Cheddar or Swiss cheese) in the quiche batter.

10th anniversary musing

Quite exactly 10 years ago, I posted my first recipe, Simple and Fluffy Gluten-Free Low-Carb Bread, to my newly established Low-Carb, So Simple blog. (That recipe is still one of my favorites today, and I’ve improved the recipe over the years.) I was on a low-carb — or actually, on a keto — diet already at that point, and I didn’t find easy and simple enough recipes that would satisfy me.

There were only a handful of keto recipes available 10 years ago. Most of them were complicated with overly long ingredient lists. As I’m an impatient person and a busy mom, they were a total turn-off for me. Moreover, as a researcher by nature, I continuously developed keto recipes that pleased my family and me.

I had been on the low-carb and keto diet for quite many years before establishing my blog. At first, the blog was a place for me to write down my recipes so that they were easy to find; kind of an online recipe book, if you will.

Soon, more people started finding my blog and considered my simple yet tasty and healthy recipes helpful. My blog grove over the years — so did the Facebook page. When it hit 10,000 likes in January 2014, I was surprised and happy.

Little did I know that in 2018, the Facebook page reached 700,000 likes! Just in four years!

The growth of the blog traffic was steady as well. Some occasional Google updates brought it down for a while, however, after a short period, the traffic started climbing up again, and my blog grew even faster. At best, hundreds of thousands of people visited my blog monthly.

In 2018, everything changed, thanks to Google’s notorious Health Update. Practically all keto and low-carb influencers lost 90% of their traffic because Google blocked those pages from search results. That trend, unfortunately, continues today. Despite posting high-quality and unique recipes with helpful text and professional photos, Google doesn’t like my site, but the traffic keeps dropping.

Many of my blogger friends share the same story — although there are a few bloggers who managed to avoid the worst hit. However, complete teams are working on those blogs (even though some claim to be just one-person businesses). I’m just truly one woman working on this blog.

But, far away are those times when masterful blog posts brought you more traffic and more visibility, and you could expect your blog to grow the more you post. Thanks to the current cancel culture and virtue signaling, hastily written inferior posts that promote Big Food or Big Pharma — or nutritionally insufficient vegan diets — get all the visibility, and clickbait posts get all the traffic. To maximize visibility, posts and articles are written for search engines, not for humans.

Even worse: Google doesn’t want you to visit sites anymore but shows all the needed information in the search results. Just try and google a recipe; you’ll see the actual recipe already in the results. No need to visit the site. Of course, it’s handy for the users but not for the bloggers who depend on the traffic.

Stealing and blatant copying of recipes have been a huge problem in recent years. Sites and mobile apps copy+paste recipes and whole blog posts. It has happened to my blogger friends and me countless times. Naturally, this reduces the visibility and is downright disgusting. The person who did all the hard work doesn’t get the recognition she deserves. Welcome to the harsh truth!

I might sound cynical, but on the other hand, I don’t want to whitewash the situation. After all, I’m a scientist, so I want to stick to the facts.

After all this recent punishment for doing hard work and high-quality posts, my question is: when will the traffic be so minuscule that the game is not worth the candle?

Maybe, I’ll do like my friend who owned a beauty salon. To celebrate the 10th anniversary of the salon, she closed it. Well, all good things must come to an end at some point.

I cannot predict when is that point for this blog, but as much as I love blogging, if things continue like this, I’ll certainly put my efforts into more fruitful work.

During these 10 years, I’ve studied the practical and the theoretical side of the keto diet and, written several books, both printed books, and eBooks, held numerous lectures and webinars. I even teach the keto diet to nutrition therapy students in a Finnish nutrition therapy institute.

I’ve established a successful company developing and selling clean keto products in Finland and Europe. Currently, I’m one of the most renowned keto experts in Finland. So, blogging is a fascinating hobby, but on the other hand, I want to prioritize my doings and go there where I can benefit people the most. If nobody reads my blog, it doesn’t benefit people. On the other hand, I can still keep the blog as my personal online recipe book.

That said, I’m super thankful that I have had the possibility to blog all these years. The keto diet has kept me thriving. Thanks to this blog, I’m happy that my English writing skills have developed and still continue to develop. My food photography skills have also improved remarkably.

Needless to say, I’m very delighted that I have been able to come up with numerous easy, simple, and delicious recipes that I know are truly healthy and don’t contain any questionable ingredients.

And when 95% of bloggers give up and stop blogging, I’m glad that I’m still posting consistently once a week — even with plunged traffic. As you see, it’s not only recipes that I post. There is so much more!

Developing a recipe, taking countless professional photos, editing photos, writing the text with descriptions, how I come up with the recipe, and providing some variations in a language that is not my mother tongue takes time. Those who write just articles with pure text and a maximum with a couple of stock photos have a really easy job, in my opinion! However, I don’t want an easy job; I want a job that pleases me.

Thanks to the low traffic and the minor visibility, not many people find my blog and my recipes nowadays. I’m indescribably thankful for all the readers and people who find my blog.

Those are my musings for the 10th anniversary of this blog. No hype, no empty words, just my sincere thoughts. Thank you for finding my blog and reading this post, I truly appreciate it.