I was watching the Food Network tonight
and they had these lovely looking Peanut Butter Cookie Dough Brownies. Now, I
LOVE peanut butter and Chocolate. My real weakness is peanut M&M’s. But, that’s
not the point. Do you think that on very rare occasions I could make this yummy
looking dessert but just substitute the sugar for Splenda? Or would it be too
much of everything?
Even if you substitute the sugar, the flour has a ton of carbs. Often hard to just sub Splenda because sugar adds texture & body to baking, in addition to sweetness,
Here’s a yummy low carb chocolate peanut treat. And, a whole lot easier:)
Makes about 16 truffles, 1 carb each
1 oz (1 square) unsweetened baker’s chocolate
1/3 cup natural smooth peanut butter (no sugar added)
2 Tbs. butter, softened
1/3 cup ricotta cheese (you can use cream cheese instead)
1 Tbs vanilla extract
1 Tbs almond extract
stevia (or whatever sweetener you like)
Melt chocolate.Stir in butter, peanut butter & ricotta until smooth. Add vanilla & almond extact & sweetener. Drop by rounded teaspoons on to waxed paper & chill until firm.
If you use granular Splenda, the carb count is higher. Liquid Splenda has no carbs.
CHOCOLATE:
2 T butter
1 oz (1 square) unsweetend baker’s chocolate
2 T heavy cream
1 T vanilla extract
1 T Splenda (or equivalent of no carb liquid Splenda)
PEANUT BUTTER:
5 T unsweetened smooth peanut butter
4 oz cream cheese
1/3 c Splenda (or 2 tsp no carb liquid Splenda)
WHIPPED CREAM:
1 cup heavy cream
1 t vanilla
1 T unsweetened cocoa
Crust: mix almond four & butter. Press in pie plate to cover bottom of plate & put in freezer.
Chocolate layer: Melt butter & chocolate in microwave approx. 2 min. Mix in cream and vanilla. Stir well. Add Splenda. Pour over frozen pie crust and put back in freezer.
Peanut Butter layer: Mix peanut butter, cream cheese and splenda with food processor or blender. Spread over frozen pie.
Whip cream with vanilla and cocoa until stiff peaks. Spread over pie and refrigerate.
Total: 73 carb. Serves 8 @ 7 carb per piece.
The pie is very rich & you may get more than 8 slices. The pie is only about 1 1/2" high.
You might want to try a recipe calculator (if you just search for it one or two should pop up)…you enter the ingredients the amount you’re using then you enter the number of servings and it’s calculates a nutrition panel for you that shows you the amount of fat, carbs, protein, calories, and some other stuff (basically what’s on a normal food label) in the serving. (serving size will be some fraction -like if you entered the final product had 24 servings then the servings size is 1/24th of the whole thing~so if you cut it into 24 bars it would be one bar)
It does have a lot of carbs…but perhaps seeing how much one serving is (both the actual size and then the nutrition info) might be able to inform you of whether it’s worth it or not… e.g. you might be able to get away with a really small amount, since each portion is smaller, but it might be too small to be satisfying…plus there’s the temptation of having the whole thing sitting there *unless you live with several others or plan on taking it to work/party kind of thing
Even if you could sub the flour for almond flour and the sugar for stevia -I would think that the BROWN sugar would be hard to sub for (unless they have a low carb version of that I don’t know about) - It has such a distinctive taste that I think would really make a difference in the cookie dough part. And no one wants to have sub-standard tasting cookie dough - there is just no point.
Damn, now I am thinking about cookie dough ice cream. I don’t have a sweets tooth at all. I was looking up the carbs on my favortie vegan ice creams the other day although and my mouth dropped open many times. Even on the vanilla only 1/2 cup for over 20 carbs at least. I can’t even remember the numbers now. Boy, I am I glad that I rarey crave sweets - I feel sorry for you guys that do - it must be quite a battle!
Where in the world do you find almond flour and what’s the impact on sugars from that? Does it bake like regular flour (i.e.: can i use it to make my pie crusts?) - R
Some supermarket health food sections carry it. Trader Joe’s has it, if there’s one near you. Health food stores have almond flour. I order from www.honeyvillegrain.com because theirs is wonderful & less expensive.
There’s almond meal & almond flour. The flour is a lighter texture. The flour is made from blanched almonds (skins removed). The meal is coarser & darker & made from almonds with the skin on.
You can make your own with a food processor.
Another low carb option is coconut flour. Golden flaxseed meal (lots of fiber & healthy fats) can also be used for baking.
One cup of almond flour has 20 grams of carbs with 11 grams of fiber & 20 grams of protein. It also has lots of good fats & calcium. To compare, 1 cup of white flour has 95 carbs & 3 grams of fiber.
There’s no gluten in nut flours, so it doesn’t have the elasticity to make things like dough & crusts. It won’t yield flaky baked things. For crust, I mix almond flour with melted butter. It’s more like a crumbly crust.
With eggs added, almond flour makes great cookies, pancakes, muffins, cakes.
I also use unsweetened almond milk (2 carbs for 8 oz) for baking.
Wow! I love all your recipes! They look so good. I think I will try them all! I am going to have to track down some of that almond flour. It sounds interesting.
I just wanted to let you all know…that I did it! I made the Peanut Butter Cookie Dough Brownies! I can also say I didn’t have a single taste. It was SO TEMPTING! I managed to eat a few of the mini sugar free PB cups to stop myself from digging in. My family and friends loved it! My brother who has a weakness for anything with PB added fell in love with it.
The only thing I changed was I put Splenda brown sugar into the dough layer. I don’t think it effected the taste.
I am now going to try Gerri’s first version this weekend. Wish me luck.
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