Tag Archives: Christmas cookies

Keto snickerdoodles!!!

December 22, 2017 Jana Snyder

Some phrases bring together words whose combination blows the mind. Things that just seem impossible, or too good to be true. “Affordable luxury.” “Well-behaved two-year-old.” “Clean kitchen countertops.”

When I heard the words “keto snickerdoodle,” I had that kind of reaction. No! That can’t be done!

But ketosizeme did it. A completely sugar-free, gluten-free snickerdoodle!

When my daughter was home for Thanksgiving, I requested she make that recipe. (I love having this girl in my kitchen!)

The cookies came out gorgeous!

They look very similar to the traditional cookies, and we loved the texture. There were a few things we didn’t love, though. None of them the fault of the original recipe…

We thought they needed a little more cinnamon on the outside — just a matter of personal preference. Ours came out way too sweet — probably a result of using a different kind of sweetener. (One of my pet peeves with stevia is that there’s so little consistency in sweetness from brand to brand, making it hard to nail someone else’s recipe unless you know what brand they’re using.) And the last thing we wanted to see if we could change was that the cookies left a weird cooling sensation in the mouth. This was probably a result of the erythritol in the Truvia sweetener we used. (Erythritol is a refined sugar alcohol that has little or no effect of blood sugar levels.) I don’t usually use granular stevia, because I haven’t found one that I like that’s free of fillers, but in this case, I thought the cookies really needed a granular sweetener.

So I experimented with the recipe a bit.

I significantly reduced the amount of sweetener used in the cookie, and tweaked the other ingredients to bring the flavor closer to what I think is a classic snickerdoodle taste — more vanilla, for one thing.

Mine didn’t spread as nicely as the original recipe; they came out having more of a bon-bon shape, but they still make a pretty plate of cookies.

I felt that, because the coating on the outside is the first thing that hits your taste buds, I should use real sugar for that, rather than a sweetener that might leave an aftertaste or weird sensations. But there’s only two teaspoons of sugar in the whole recipe — which works out to 1/10th of a teaspoon or less for each individual cookie — which I consider a very acceptable amount. (If even a tiny amount awakens your sugar dragon, though, you might want to try a granular sweetener instead.)

Also, my husband thought my first version was a little too oily, so I cut back on the butter and added a little coconut milk. (You can use real milk, cream, or half-and-half, if that works for your diet.)

And with that change, we were both like, “Nailed it!”

Keto snickerdoodle recipe

Makes about 20, depending on size.

Dough:
2 cups almond flour from blanched almonds
3 Tbsp Truvia sweetener
3 Tblsp butter, softened
1 egg + 1 yolk
1.5 teasp vanilla extract
1 teasp coconut milk (the thick kind for cooking, not the thin kind for drinking)
1/2 teasp baking soda
1/2 teasp cream of tartar
Pinch of salt
—
Coating:
1 teasp cinnamon
2 to 3 teasp fine sugar, organic if possible (if your sugar is coarse, use 4 to 6 teasp)

Preheat oven to 350 F. Combine the cinnamon sugar coating in a small bowl and set aside. (Use the lesser amount of sugar [2 teasp fine or 4 teasp coarse] if you’re accustomed to little or no sugar in your diet. Use the higher amount [3 teasp fine or 6 teasp coarse] if not.)

Butter should be softened almost to the point of melting. Mix all dough ingredients well in a small mixing bowl, using a mixer if possible. (A small handheld mixer is fine.) The dough will look crumbly, but will stick together well when pressed.

Roll the dough into balls slightly larger than 1 inch, or use a cookie scoop. Coat the balls in the cinnamon sugar, leaving the bottom side uncoated. (This avoids burning the cinnamon sugar, and reduces the amount of sugar you’ll ultimately eat with each cookie.)

Place closely spaced on a parchment-lined or nonstick cookie sheet. The cookies will spread a little, but not much. Place in the preheated oven on the middle rack.

Check cookies at 10 minutes. A toothpick inserted should come out mostly clean. It’s good for them to be soft in the middle. If they’re not quite done, continue checking every minute or so.

Let cool to room temp, then store in an airtight container.

Makes about 20, depending on size.

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Nut tarts, the sequel

March 10, 2012 Jana Snyder

I previously shared a recipe for one of our family’s favorite sweet treats, which we call nut tarts.

In the past, I’ve always made them as large wedges cut out of a 12″ pie. But I wanted to experiment with making smaller pieces. You can’t just cut the wedges thinner, because they’d get too fragile near the point. And all the points would break off. And then someone would have to eat those.

So this is a brief instruction in assembling and slicing them a different way. The original recipe is here, and up to the point where you begin rolling out the crust, nothing changes.

Instead of rolling the crust into a 12″ circle, I aimed for more of a rectangle shape, which was roughly 12″ in the longer direction. Then I marked the bottom crust lightly with a spatula to show where I was going to trim it. Then I spread the nuts to about 3/4 to 1″ away from that mark, in two rows, leaving about 2″ between the rows.

Then I lightly moistened the perimeter and center, and laid the second crust over this and pressed it gently down all over. Is it just me, or does this look sort of creepy?

Then I trimmed the excess crust away, leaving a rectangle-y shape. I rolled out the excess dough for a bonus treat, but that’s completely optional. I sprinkled the nut tarts lightly and the extra dough generously with cinnamon sugar. Oh, and the photo doesn’t show this, but I pricked the top crust down the middle with a fork.

Then into the oven to bake for 18 – 20 minutes, or until golden-brown and delicious!

I cut one piece into wedges and the other into bars. The holes I made with the fork ended up making the top crusts crack apart there and some of the pieces break in two, so I would do that differently next time.

I may or may not have eaten the broken piece.

I think next time, I’ll do wedges, but make the fork pokes closer to the wide end, like this:

Aren’t you glad you can learn from my failures instead of making your own?

The way I cut these, I didn’t end up with too many more pieces than in the original method, but they are sturdier. And cuter! And every bit as tasty!

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Christmas cookies cookie dessert

Almond poppy seed shortbread

March 2, 2012 Jana Snyder

This recipe has been in my favorites file for decades. Back when I made bunches of Christmas cookies every year, this was in the mix year after year, and it was a big hit at our recent birthday party. It makes a delicate, melt-in-your-mouth shortbread with a subtle almond flavor.

Don’t be alarmed if you sneak a taste of the dough and it seems a little bland. The shortbread itself is not very sweet, but that is purposely so, to balance out the sweetness of the glaze. If you want to try making these without the glaze, you’ll probably want to double the sugar, at least.

Recipe: Almond Poppy Seed Shortbread

1/2 c. + 2 T. real butter
1/2 tsp. almond extract
1 1/4 c. all-purpose flour
3 T. sugar
1 T. poppy seeds
almond glaze (see below)

Take 1/2 c. of butter and soften it slightly; just enough to make it mashable. Mash it with a fork, then sprinkle the almond extract over and mash some more to work the extract through the butter. Set aside.

In a medium mixing bowl, combine flour, sugar and poppy seeds. With a pastry blender, cut in the almond-butter until mixture resembles large crumbs.

Try forming the dough into a ball; if it will not all stick together, cut in another tablespoon of soften butter. Test it again, and keep adding butter a little at a time until all the dough sticks together when pressed into a ball.

Once you have it worked into one large ball, place the dough on a cookie sheet. Because this dough is so buttery, you don’t need to grease the pan or use parchment.

Begin patting the dough out and flatten it. It may crumble apart in places. Just pat them back together.

After it’s patted out, use a rolling pin to smooth the surface more.

As the edges crumble apart, periodically gather and pat them back into the circle.

Use the rolling pin to make the top smooth, and your hands to pat things back together, alternating between the two as needed. Work the dough gently until it’s a circle approximately 8″ in diameter, and 1/2″ thick.

For cutting the pieces, you can just eyeball it, or, if you want very uniform pieces, use a ruler to measure and a toothpick to mark spacing in the dough.

Then use the ruler as a straightedge guide, and a pizza cutter to make the slices. I cut this batch into 16 squares, but you could also cut them into bars or diamonds. You don’t need to separate the squares before baking.

Bake in 325 F oven 25 to 35 minutes, until edges just start to brown.

Remove from oven and slice through again with the pizza cutter, in the same place as your first cuts.

An offset spatula works great for moving these delicate little square cookies.

Let cookies cool completely. Drizzle with almond glaze. (Recipe below.) To avoid the globby drizzles seen on the left here, don’t start your drizzle on top of a cookie. Start the drizzle just a bit off to the side, then when it becomes a thinner, uniform stream, move over the cookie and wave the spoon gently but quickly back and forth as you move along over the cookies.

Ain’t they purty?!

Makes 16 cookies (plus a few scraps!) if cut into 1.5″ squares.

Almond Glaze
1.5 T. milk
1/4 t. almond extract
1 c. sifted powdered sugar

Combine milk and almond extract. Add to powdered sugar and mix thorough. Add a little more milk if necessary to make of glazing consistency.

This makes enough glaze to cover two batches of dough.

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Seven special occasion cookies
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