Ever since I was old enough to be trusted in the kitchen, I’ve loved baking everything from cupcakes and cookies to cheesecakes and breads. There’s so much I enjoy about baking: measuring out ingredients so satisfyingly precisely, smelling sweet aromas waft from the oven, and naturally, sampling the tasty final products.

But this hobby of mine has been a bit hazardous at times, seeing as just about every recipe I’ve ever followed has been far from low carb. Mainly, this was due to the fact that I never really had low-carb recipes on hand; rather, I was following tried-and-true, blue-ribbon-winning recipes from my mother’s collection of cookbooks. Plus, I figured that family and friends would be more willing to try baked goods that were made from “real” ingredients, not artificial sweeteners or alternative flour mixes. There was never a reason why I wouldn’t be able to try my creations, either – that’s why I had insulin, of course.

Now that I have a kitchen of my own to experiment in, though, I find my interests turning to lower-carb cooking and baking. I don’t follow a low-carb diet, but I will occasionally cut carbs here and there to see whether my blood sugars benefit from it and to find out if my taste buds like it.

Besides my lack of experience, I was hesitant to try low-carb baking because it seems like the core ingredients needed for most recipes are so hard to find…and expensive! Coconut flour, xanthan gum, and erythritol aren’t exactly the most common items on the typical grocery store’s shelves. But thankfully, I am fairly close to an Aldi supermarket, where I’ve had incredible luck finding things that are priced significantly cheaper compared to other grocery stores. So, after a couple of slowly rotting bananas on my counter top inspired me to search for a low-carb banana bread recipe, I gathered up my low-carb baking supplies on a trip to Aldi and set about baking my first keto-friendly banana bread.

It did not go as expected. I intended on baking two breads, seeing as the recipe called for one banana per loaf and I had two to be used. The actual process of making the first loaf of bread was actually very straightforward – mixing dry ingredients, then wet, then combining all of them together. The bread had to go into the oven at 350 for an hour, and when it finally was done, it looked totally normal and even tasted pretty good. The walnuts I’d mixed in added the perfect crunch and helped the banana bread taste like the “normal” kind.

So I felt fairly confident as I started to make the batter for the second loaf. The only difference this time was that I added dark chocolate chips, which I think are the perfect complement to banana bread. I even dotted the top of the bread with the chips in a pattern to add a little extra flair.

I knew something was wrong immediately upon taking the bread out of the oven one hour later. The chocolate chips I’d artfully arranged on the top had disappeared. WTF? It only got worse when I removed the loaf from the pan…because half of it stuck to it. That’s right, half of my banana bread was not salvageable, and the other half that came out was looking pretty damn ugly.

The taste? It was fine…not great, though. The chips had melted into the dough in an unappealing way. The bread itself seemed less like a banana bread and more like a weird banana-chocolate chip mush. It was definitely not the outcome I wanted. And no, I did not take a picture of the fail…I didn’t want the reminder that it was a bit of a hot mess.

Does this mean I’m done experimenting with low-carb baking? Absolutely not. I’ll take a little break from it for now and search for new, promising recipes at another time. But one thing I’ll do for sure the next go-around? I won’t get cocky and add any mix-ins…unless they’re specifically called for in the recipe instructions.