I just baked another batch of no-longer-quite-keto almond-flour cookies.* They have real chocolate chips, and the brown sugar is Truvia, which is a 50-50 blend of Stevia and real brown sugar, which has about half the carbs per unit volume. For nuts, I used up the rest of my pine nuts instead of buying and crushing more cashews. These cookies don't spread much in the oven, so you have to manually flatten them out a bit. I use a sheet of waxed paper and a flat-bottomed bowl or glass, pressing down on the top of each dough ball. If you leave them as dough balls on the cookie tray, they turn into Levain Bakery-style thicc cookies. The cookies in the smaller tray didn't get flattened as much this time, but they came out fine. That said, I do prefer the look of the cookies in the bigger tray.
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| a wide shot of both trays (with two cookies already MIA) |
I'd been worried that the pine nuts might burn, but they all seemed fine. If anything, I wish the nuts had toasted more to enhance flavor. I'll pre-toast them next time.
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| smaller tray, slightly fused cookies |
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| larger tray, nicer-looking cookies |
I can't eat an infinity of these cookies without gaining weight, but the cookies don't pack as much of a sugary, carby punch as regular Toll House cookies do. Almond flour has about a sixth of the carbs found in regular wheat flour per 100 grams, and as mentioned above, the sugar is at 50% concentration. I feel that the real chips and the half-real Truvia sweetener are a small price to pay for a better-tasting cookie. Today, I had my allotted four, and I'll have four more every day for the next three days (sixteen cookies in this batch).
Tomorrow, the first full week of the lunar new year, things get serious as I embark on a new exercise program (not much different from the old one I'd attempted before two hospitalizations last year), a stricter dietary plan (again, not a new one), and my self-study in earnest. I'm on the brink of buying equipment so I can test out my newfound knowledge and start making myself a bit more professional when it comes to still photography. Later, I'll get more video, audio, and art-making equipment so I can show off my new knowledge re: video-making, InDesign, monetized Squarespace blogging (I'll finally be moving over in a few months), graphic design, and everything else. Reinforcing understanding involves teaching learned material back. Some of my readers are avid photographers and the like, so I hope to get lots of constructive criticism from them.
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*The original recipe comes from All Day I Dream About Food on YouTube.
Damn, those cookies look good enough to have me craving for some. Perhaps I'll explore similar ingredients utilizing my girl's kitchen expertise. Although I must say, going with keto pancakes just wasn't the same. On the other hand, I no longer miss a pancake breakfast.
ReplyDeleteThey taste really good, no doubt because of the real ingredients (chocolate chips, 1/2 the brown sugar). The key is the almond flour, which cuts way down on the carbs per cookie. The only other disadvantage is the lack of real crunchiness—if you're into crunchy cookies. My buddy Charles says he's not, so he liked my previous batch just fine. Your mileage may vary.
DeleteThose look delicious!
ReplyDeleteAndy in Japan
How did you find the pine nuts? I've never put pine nuts in any of my baked goods before.
ReplyDeleteI've found pine nuts at my building's grocery before, as well as at Costco, where they're cheapest. But I got my latest bag at the local Shinsegae Food Market.
DeleteOh... that was probably not the best way to word my question. I meant, "Did you find the pine nuts to be a suitable substitute for cashews?" It made sense in my head at the time, but I can see now that my meaning is not the obvious interpretation.
ReplyDeleteThere's the same ambiguity with trouver and finden in French and German.
DeleteI think I prefer cashews or walnuts, but pine nuts are okay. And for the lazy man: they don't really need to be crushed for cookies.