Keto shortbread a sugar-free, low-carb Christmas treat

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This article was published 14/12/2021 (1106 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

At first glance, the low-carbohydrate regimen of a ketogenic diet should be at odds with the sweet and doughy treats of the holiday season.

Not so, says baker Anna May Van Dyke, who has followed a keto lifestyle for 20 years and has run a keto-focused shop, Anna May’s Keto Treats Bakery, for the past three. After two years in the Polo Park area, she moved the bakery in 2020 to 15 Dodds Rd., in Headingley, just off Portage Avenue.

The keto diet reduces carbs by focusing on meat, fish, eggs, dairy and vegetables. Sugary, starchy foods are off-limits, meaning most holiday baking requires a fair bit of modification.

Van Dyke came across her recipe for the Free Press’s 12 Days of Christmas Cookies, Keto Shortbread Cookies, two years ago. It follows the traditional shortbread-making process but replaces sugar with a sweetener that mixes stevia and erythritol, and uses almond flour instead of wheat flour.

While other natural fats, such as sour cream, coconut oil, olive oil and coconut cream, are common in her other keto desserts, the one key ingredient in shortbread — butter — remains in this version.

The sweetener is most noticeable aspect of the recipe, and while store-bought products such as Swerve or Truvia, which blend stevia and erythritol, work well for home bakers, Van Dyke says, her Keto Treats Bakery imports a custom stevia-erythritol blend from the United States that is organic and non-GMO, and that she says takes away the risk of an odd aftertaste.

“I’m very fussy about the taste. They taste just like sugar,” Van Dyke says of the sweetener and the final products. “It’s expensive but it’s a very good alternative. It’s natural without any negative side effects.”

She says her bakery gets many out-of-province visitors and ships to customers across Canada seeking keto-friendly foods.

While the sugarless, low-carb aspect of her baking also draws people with diabetes to her shop, she says folks who don’t follow special diets enjoy her treats as well.

“A lot of people ask me, ‘Is this really keto?’ or ‘How keto is this, because it doesn’t taste like keto,’ ” she says. “It tastes like the real thing, but it’s fully keto.”

While it’s common to see keto-friendly goods — foods that forego carbohydrates and use sugar substitutes such as stevia — at grocery stores and big-box outlets, there are few Canadians that follow a keto diet, according to a 2020 Dalhousie University study.

The survey, held in conjunction with pollster Angus Reid, found only four per cent of Canadians were keto practitioners and also found nine per cent tried a keto diet but dropped it.

Van Dyke has stuck with keto for two decades, and she says it has helped her with inflammation and auto-immune issues. She has converted many everyday recipes into keto for her family — after hours of experimenting — but she wishes she could create a satisfactory keto version of a non-keto favourite.

”I consider some things sacred such as corn chips, corn tortillas,” she says. “Now we do have a flatbread that can be used in place of tortillas, but one of my favourite foods that I miss a lot is the corn chips, and for me, there is just no keto version of corn chips that qualify for me.

“When I have a special occasion, I will order nachos, but I feel it when I do cheat. I feel it for a couple of days. It doesn’t feel great, but that is my one cheat treat, nachos.”

Keto Shortbread Cookies

Dry ingredients:
375 ml (1 1/2 cups) almond flour
2.5 (1/2 tsp) xanthan gum
2.5 ml (1/2 tsp) salt
85 g butter, softened
5 ml (1 tsp) vanilla
125 ml (1/2 cup) erythritol/stevia blend (or carb-free sweetener of choice)

Mix dry ingredients and set aside. In a separate bowl, cream together butter, vanilla and sweetener. Slowly add dry ingredients to creamed mixture and mix well.

Form dough into a log 3-5 cm (1 1/2 – 2 inches) thick and wrap in plastic wrap. Refrigerate at least two hours.

When dough is firm, cut approximately 1/3-inch slices to form cookies.

Bake at 150 C (300 F) for 45 minutes or until slightly golden.

Alan.Small@winnipegfreepress.com

Twitter: @AlanDSmall