Christmas Cookies, Christmas Cookies...

Both of these are and can easily be made high protein with the addition of your favorite protein powder. I will include recipes for cookies with and without added protein so you can decide which you'd like to try!

While there are lots of low carb cookie recipes, I have only ended up trying a handful in my time. I'm quite picky about cookies in general, but when you add the low carb factor in, I get even pickier. To this day, my favorite low carb cookie recipe is a non-traditional rendition of the Snowball cookies that often adorn Holiday dessert platters.

 Low Carb Snowball Cookies

 

• 2 cups fine ground almond flour 
• 1 cup finely chopped pecans
• 2 tbsp coconut flour
• 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp pumpkin pie spice
• 1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
• 1/4 tsp ground cardamom
• Large pinch of salt
• 1/2 cup Kerry Gold Butter, softened
• 1/2 cup low carb sweetener of choice
• 1 large egg or 1/4 cup egg substitute
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/2 tsp almond extract
• 3/4 cup powdered low carb sweetener of choice

 
*Preheat oven to 325F and line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper.

1. In a medium bowl, whisk together almond flour, chopped pecans, coconut flour, pumpkin pie spice, nutmeg, cardamom, baking powder and salt.
2. In a large bowl, beat butter with sweetener until light and fluffy, using an electric hand mixer (or, alternatively, a stand mixer.) Beat in egg/egg substitute, vanilla and almond extracts until well combined.
3. Beat in almond flour mixture until dough comes together. Let dough sit for half and hour.
4. Form dough into 3/4 inch balls and place on baking sheets about 1 inch apart.
5. Bake 18 minutes, or until just lightly golden brown.
6. Add powdered sweetener to a large zip top bag. As you remove the cookies from the oven, drop a couple at a time into the bag of powdered sweetener. Shake to coat the cookies in powdered sweetener. Remove cookies and repeat until all have been covered. It's important to
   

   

   do this while they are still quite warm. The powdered sweetener won't stick well otherwise.
   
   
   
   
   
   

Traditionally, a majority of the better is made from butter and pecans, so you can see how these can easily be made low carb. The other main ingredient in Snowballs is all purpose flour, which we all know is a no-no in any low carb diet. Luckily the texture you generally desire in these cookies is easily emulated with almond flour. These are very much Keto friendly cookies as well. They are made up from nuts, ground up nuts, butter, spices and sweetener. What could be bad about that combination? Little golf ball sized, powdered sugar covered, nutty nuggets of goodness! These cookies are not super sweet and are amazing with a hot cup of tea or coffee. Bring these to any holiday party and you'll be a star!



Now onto our second recipe. This one is less cookie and more candy, but we'll just ignore that because delicious is delicious! In a previous post, I showed you a recipe for fudge that is very close to a traditional recipe in ingredients and texture. This recipe is quite different as it uses cream cheese where the traditional fudge would use sweetened condensed milk. The cream cheese gives it a nice thick texture that mimics what you'd get in a regular fudge recipe. It's less firm, but if you wanted to make it more firm, you'd just up the amount of chocolate or reduce the amount of cream cheese. Either of these would result in a higher percentage of cocoa solids, which is where the majority of the structure comes from.

Dark Chocolate Orange Fudge

 

• 6 oz unsweetened baking chocolate
• 8 oz neufchatel cheese
• 1/2 cup Kerry Gold butter
• 2 tsp vanilla stevia
• 2 tsp orange extract
• 1/2 cup half and half
• 1/3 cup sweetener
• dash of salt

1. Prepare a glass baking dish by spraying with cooking spray. Set aside. Prepare double boiler using either a glass or metal bowl sat on top of a cooking pot with 1-2" of water in the bottom (see illustration). Add chocolate, butter and half and half to the bowl of your double boiler before turning heat on to medium-low under the pan of your double boiler.
2. In a separate slightly larger bowl, add neufchatel cheese, sweetener, vanilla stevia and dash of salt. Using a hand mixer, whip until sweetener is fully creamed into the neufchatel (about 1 minute.)
3. Stir chocolate mixture in your double boiler continually until you begin to see steam rising from around the outside of the bowl. Turn heat down to low and continue stirring until everything is fully melted and combined. Add in orange extract and stir just until it is fully mixed in. If you were to put your finger into this mixture, it should only feel mildly warm, not hot. If it gets too hot, you risk scorching the chocolate which ruins the taste and texture.
   
4. When fully melted, add chocolate mixture to the bowl with the neufchatel mixture. If using protein powder, add now. Using your hand mixer, beat on medium for 1-2 minutes or until your fudge looks smooth and shiny.
5. Pour fudge into prepared baking dish and use a spatula to create one smooth layer. Cover and refrigerate for 2-3 hours or until firm. Cut into 24 pieces and serve.

Just for comparison, here are the nutritional information for the original recipes.

Snowball Cookies

Traditional Fudge