Low Carb Cookies: Lemon 'Sugar' Cookies

These cookies have just a touch of sweetness and a lovely lemon flavor that would go well with tea or coffee.

They can be made either sugar free or reduced sugar (which is what I give my toddler).

The recipe makes a few cookies more than 12, with the exact number depending on how big you want them to be.


Ingredients:

• 1/4 cup sweetener (either honey, Truvia, or Splenda)
• 1/4 cup butter
• 1 tbsp vanilla extract
• 1 egg
• 2 1/4 cups almond flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• Zest of one lemon

Cookie coating (optional)

• 1/2 cup unsweetened shredded coconut
  
• 1/4 cup regular white sugar, optional

You can either use both the sugar and coconut together or each alone or skip them altogether.

Instructions:

1.Combine butter and sweetener in mixer and blend.

2.Add in vanilla, egg and lemon zest, blend.

3.Add almond flour and baking soda and blend.

4.Roll dough (which can be sticky) into balls about the size of a ping-pong ball.

5.Dip balls in coating as desired.

6.Place dough on cookie sheet and press down gently with fingers, forming as close to a circle as you can.

7.Bake at 350F for 10-13 minutes. I start with 10 minutes and then check, adding time based on how far along the cookies are at the 10 minute mark.

8.Let cool and enjoy!

Note the last two pics include the molasses crackle top cookie dough, which is why there are yellow and dark brown cookies. In case you were wondering! The gluten free low carb molasses crackle top cookie recipe will be posted next.

Chocolate for Breakfast

The latest batch of my 'chocolate for breakfast muffins' turned out so pretty, I had to share a photo.

Seriously, these muffins make life worth living. If you are not an egg person, which I am not, you would do well to get some almond flour and try these muffins.

As a busy mom to a busy toddler, it is GREAT to have these in the fridge on Sunday for the week ahead. No muss, no fuss instant breakfast that I can eat in the car. (Tip: Have some dental floss handy the almond flour does tend to get between teeth.)

Yes almond flour is expensive but a 5lb bag at around $30 will make at least 3 months worth of breakfast muffins which is less than a buck a day. For chocolate.

How can you not try this? Can you tell I'm a fan? :)

Here's the recipe.

Low Carb Chocolate Cake for Breakfast Recipe

Okay, so the cold has moved on and I can taste now--the chocolate low carb muffins turned out great! I'm really happy because now I have an easy option for breakfast that's not eggs. The texture is like a high end European torte. The flavor is mildly sweet. Plus they are healthy; full of fiber, antioxidants courtesy of the cocoa powder, and protein. I am thrilled with how these turned out.

These muffins have approximately 15 g carb per serving assuming you get 12 muffins out of the recipe (around 10g if you use Splenda as a sweetener). Remember to count this in your daily nut allotment, you don't want to overeat on the nuts as that can stall weight loss! Also, due to the flax content, don't eat more than one a day unless you feel like spending some quality time on the toilet.

At some point I will add a picture.

Here's the recipe...although I plan to keep tweaking it to try and get the carb count down.

Ingredients

-1 1/2 cups almond flour (I used Honeyville which had the best price I've found--Order direct, Amazon sells at a higher price!)

-1/2 cup ground flax 'flour' (I used Bob's Red Mill --Amazon has a good price for 4 packages)

-1/2 cup cocoa powder

-2 tsps baking powder

-1/4 tsp salt

-1/4 cup brown sugar or 1/2 cup Splenda Brown Sugar blend (See note at the bottom about why I used sugar in this recipe)

-1 stick butter (I have used slightly less with no ill effect and want to try to cut it in 1/2 in future experiments)

-1 mashed banana (for flavor and as a natural sweetener, you could also try prune puree. See my note about why I use a banana below.)

-1 tbsp vanilla

-3 eggs (I've used just 2 eggs with no noticeable change, so that's an option too)

-1/3 cup water

-1/2 cup 60% Ghiradelli chocolate chips

Instructions

1.Preheat oven to 350F

2. Mix the following dry ingredients together and set aside--almonds, flax, salt, baking powder, cocoa powder. FYI the sugar gets creamed with the butter.

3.Cream butter with mashed banana, brown sugar, vanilla, eggs and water. (The butter might fleck instead of blend, which is fine, but consider melting in the microwave next time for better blending.)

4.Add in dry ingredients and mix.

5.Fold in the chocolate chips or allocate 8 chips per muffin once they are in the muffin tin.

6.Fill 12 muffin cups 2/3 full and bake for 20-25 minutes. Check them as they bake as they can cook fast.

How I got the carb count...

I went through the ingredients and added up all the carbs, subtracted fiber and divided by 12.

Why the recipe uses sugar and banana...

Just a note since not everyone may have read the blog archives... I try to cook without using chemical sweeteners because we have a toddler at home and don't want to feed her 'frankenfood' not even if it's homemade (although I suppose you could argue that sugar is no better, sometimes you can't win for losing). If you want to use Splenda or Stevia in place of the sugar and banana, go right ahead. I would suggest using 1/2 cup of artificial sweetener.

Actually, as it turns out the toddler hates these muffins, so I have been making them with Splenda for myself. The toddler now gets a flour/almond flour/flax blend muffin which she likes better.