Happy Valentine’s Day! Low carb treats to share with your valentine, or to keep all to yourself.
These cinnamon rolls won’t put Cinnabons out of business, but they’re yummy. Not a good pic below. Photographing food isn’t easy. One has a bite taken out because I had to taste it right away. Hey, quality control is important, right?
Cinnamon Rolls–8 buns, about 2.5 carbs each (using zero carb sweetener)
Dough:
1/2 cup almond flour
1/3 cup coconut flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
2 TBS vanilla whey isolate protein powder
2 TBS vital wheat gluten
1/4 tsp salt
3 eggs
4 TBS butter, melted
2 tsp vanilla extract
Equivalent of 2 TBS sugar (I use zero carb liquid Splenda)
Filling:
2 TBS butter, melted
1 heaping TBS cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground cloves
3 heaping TBS powdered erythritol
Icing:
2 TBS cream cheese, softened
3 TBS heavy cream
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 TBS powdered erythritol
Preheat oven to 400. Line a 9" round baking pan with parchment paper.
For the dough, mix the dry ingredients together in a medium bowl. Add eggs, butter, vanilla & sugar substitute and mix until dough comes together and resembles thick cookie batter.
Roll out dough between sheets of parchment paper to approximately a 10 x 6 inch rectangle. Peel off top layer of parchment paper.
In a small bowl, mix together filling ingredients. Spread filling on dough rectangle, leaving about a 1/2 inch border around the outside. Reserve a bit of filling to put on top of cooked buns.
Very carefully, peel one long edge of dough off parchment and roll slowly and carefully, pressing to form a tight log. Cut into 8 pieces using waxed dental floss. A knife with squish them. Place cut side down in baking pan.
Bake about 15 minutes or until filling bubbles out slightly and rolls are golden brown.
Mix cream cheese, cream, vanilla & erythritol until smooth. Spread on rolls while warm. Put reserved filling on top .
Chocolate-Dipped Almond Florentines, 20-25 cookies, about 1.5 carbs per cookie (using zero carb sweetener)
2 large egg whites, at room temperature
1/3 cup equivalent of sugar (combo of powdered erythritol & liquid Splenda works best. Both are zero carbs)
2 cups sliced almonds
1-1 1/2 cups almond flour
2 tsp vanilla extract
a good pinch of sea salt
grated zest of half an orange, or 1/4 tsp real (not artificially flavored) orange extract
Preheat oven to 350. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
Mix together all the ingredients. Start with 1 cup almond flour & add only as much needed just to hold batter together. The cookies are mostly sliced almonds, not dough. They’ll hold together as they bake.
Dip your hand in cold water before lifting each portion of almonds & place heaping tablespoon-sized mounds on the baking sheet. Flatten cookies with a fork.
Bake about 20 minutes, until golden brown. Exact time depends on how large your cookies are. If they’re not brown across the top and bottom, they won’t be crispy.
Let cookies cool, then lift carefully with a thin spatula & place on a cooling rack. When cool, coat top with chocolate.
Chocolate Dip
1 ounce (1 square) unsweetened baker’s chocolate
2 TBS butter, very soft
splash of heavy cream
1 tsp vanilla extract
pinch sea salt (if using unsalted butter)
Sweetener to taste (I use zero carb liquid Splenda because it mixes in well)
Melt chocolate in a double boiler, or in metal bowl over gently simmering water. Stir in remaining ingredients until smooth.
Yum! Thanks Gerri.
The almond florentines sound lovely. I can’t do sugar alcohols, but I’ll try it with Splenda and adjust the carbs.
Thank you!
Oh my! I Love cinnamon rolls but I only have a half normally. Less carbs always Better. Thank you Gerri. 
Happy V Day!!
Erythritol doesn’t act like other sugar alcohols. No gastric upset & no effect on BG. It’s about 70% as sweet as sugar. Shortly after I was diagnosed a friend brought me diabetic chocolates. I’m one of those who can metabolize sugar alcohols & had soaring BG from the mailtol in those chocolates. Never again.
Enjoy!
Hope you like them.
A couple of people asked where to buy erthyritol. I order it on-line from www.netrition.com. It’s expensive, but a bag lasts a while. Comes in granular & powdered form. I like powdered.
Thanks for the recipes. Could you please post the grams of protein and fat as well as the grams of carb?
Hi Jag,
You can plug the recipes into http://caloriecount.about.com/cc/recipe_analysis.php for nutritonal profiles. They don’t list almond flour, so change this to almond meal.
Thanks, Gerri!
Are you saying these are 2.5 GRAMS of carbohydrate? Or 2.5 carbs, meaning 45 grams? Either way, do they taste as good as they look? Not familiar with some of the ingredients.
Yes, the cinnamon rolls are about 2.5 GRAMS of carb per roll. That’s what 2.5 carbs each is referring to. Sorry, don’t know what you mean 2.5 carbs meaning 45 grams. Carbs are counted in grams. I think they’re quite good & why I wanted to share. Hope you like them.
1 carbohydrate is 16 grams, I think. I also, refer to “grams” as “carbs” but wanted to make sure. These look like 45 grams. You should write a cookbook. I will make these. Am in need of free food other than nuts,cheese etc, for when she has a sweet craving. If I can find good low gram desserts, that would be helpful. At this point we just cover the carbs; I would rather have low carb cookies, cakes muffins though. We don’t usually offer these. I don’t think she has had a cinnamon roll in three years. Just the type of treat that will spike into the 300s so we do avoid them.
Hope your niece enjoys them. There are fabulous low carb desserts at http://healthyindulgences.blogspot.com/. I serve these recipes to guests & no one knows they’re low carb. What makes sweetened recipes work is the combo of erythritol & Splenda. No funky artificial sweetener after taste. Coconut flour & almond flour are very low carb & high fiber. Not as light a texture as wheat flour, but still good & healthier. Here’s a super easy chocolate cake. Also good as muffins. Great with the icing recipe above, or with whipped cream. You can leave out the cocoa powder & use other flavors instead. I’ve used the basic recipe for lemon poppy seed cake, maple walnut cake & spice cake.
CHOCOLATE CAKE–8 slices, 4 carbs each (8.7 carbs minus 4.7 grams fiber) Carb total is using zero carb sweetener.
2 cups almond flour
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 t baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
4 eggs
1 stick butter, melted
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/4 cup erythritol
Artificial sweetener equivalent to 1 cup sugar (I use liquid Splenda)
1/2 cup water (or 1/2 cup strong decaf coffee for mocha flavor)
Preheat oven to 350 F. Grease a 8" baking pan (round or square).
Mix dry ingredients together. Mix together liquid ingredients.
Add the wet ingredients to dry & blend well.
Pour into pan and bake for about 25 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.
Sorry, don’t know what you mean by 1 carb is 16 grams. Grams are a weight measurement, of course. How many carbs are in gram of a food depends on what the food is:) One gram of celery has less carbs than one gram of potato.
Thanks for the link. But man, that’s a hard database to use. It complains about a lot of units (e.g. wheat gluten had to be given in grams) and can’t find things -even things in its database like coconut flour (I needed to use its id [129930]). If you were getting 2.5 g carb, you should check that it wasn’t ignoring some of your ingredients because it couldn’t find them or size them. Even if mine is right, 7.1g is surprisingly low carb. But there is a lot of fat and sat fat.
Anyway, I came up with (per cinnamon roll):
Nutrition Facts
Serving Size 54 g
Amount Per Serving
Calories 207
Calories from Fat 152
% Daily Value*
Total Fat 16.9g 26%
Saturated Fat 8.4g 42%
Trans Fat 0.0g
Cholesterol 106mg 35%
Sodium 177mg 7%
Total Carbohydrates 7.1g 2%
Dietary Fiber 3.2g 13%
Sugars 0.8g
Protein 7.5g
Vitamin A 9% • Vitamin C 0%
Calcium 9% • Iron 4%
- Based on a 2000 calorie diet
Like the low carbs - will have to do some research on those ingredients you have listed and see if they’re available in Canada (I can’t even pronounce them - you’d laugh if you heard me trying to say it out loud here at my screen - right tongue twister).
For some not well known ingredients, it’s a pain. For the cinnamon rolls, I looked up individual ingredients which is why I didn’t have the protein & fat info you requested. When you check wheat gluten, make sure it’s vital wheat gluten & not just wheat gluten. Vital wheat gluten has only 6 carbs per 1/4 cup & 23 grams of protein, 0 saturated fat. Plain wheat gluten has more carbs.
Depending where you look, coconut flour is listed with varying amounts of carbs & fiber.
The vanilla whey isolate protein I have is 2 carbs for 1/3 cup, 22.4 grams protein, 1 gram saturated fat, Don’t know what figure you found for this ingredient.because many protein powders are sweetened & some have fillers.
I don’t subtract fiber for net carbs unless it’s high fiber, close to 50% or more. I did subtract fiber for net carbs in that recipe because almond flour & coconut flour are high fiber. Using the data you found & subtracting for fiber, it comes to 3.9 carbs per roll.
Yeah, I noticed that their database had different manufacturers and there were some differences between manufacturers. Unfortunately they don’t even tell you which manufacturer they used. I guess you can use that recipe database for rough figures, but you’re best using the labels of the actual ingredients you’ve bought (as you did) if you want to be exact.
Anyway its a useful (but certainly not perfect) resource. Thanks for the link.
I don’t know that I trust most nutritional labels as accurate either–lol. They can be off. The coconut flour brand I use now lists more carbs than previously. I used to have a link (can’t find it at the moment) that showed hidden carbs. You plug in the label info & it tallies up to see if it’s accurate. No wonder it’s so hard to count carbs when we don’t have precise data.