Last month, I wrote about my holiday cookie tradition, and in our podcast, I mentioned that I would try to find a way to make my cake-mix cookies in a sugar-free way. I wanted to take my recipe (linked below) a step further and make them keto. As we have discussed before, sugar-free doesn’t necessarily mean keto.
There are plenty of sugar-free cake mixes out there. What immediately comes to mind is the popular sugar-free line of cake mixes by Pillsbury® that could be easily substituted in my earlier recipe for cake mix cookies to lower the sugar content in the cookies. To make it keto, I needed to take it a step further and lower the carbohydrate content as well.
In the past, I have been on different forms of a low carbohydrate diet. These types of diets are difficult for me because I have a sweet tooth. As I mentioned in my sugar-free baking blog, I have been on the hunt for a substitute to trick my brain into thinking I am being bad while I am still being somewhat good. I call it “healthy junk,” and I have been on a mission to satisfy those cravings since I started my weight loss journey in the spring of 2019.
I typically go to Sprouts Farmer’s Market or Market Street to get my “healthy junk”, and I will further explain my grocery shopping science in an upcoming budget shopping blog. However, I want to explain why I like these grocery stores so much. Sprouts caters to individuals with special diets such as myself (I am low-carb, gluten-free, and mostly dairy-free) by labeling their pre-packaged foods with diet-friendly labels to make the process of grocery shopping quicker and easier. The labeling process is also very helpful for those just starting out on a special diet.
At the store, I discovered that Swerve® also makes a sugar-free and keto-friendly cake mix. I also picked up some Lily’s® no sugar added Pumpkin Spice chips (on clearance) for a low-sugar add-in. From there, I kept the recipe the same and just substituted the Swerve® cake mix and the pumpkin spice chips. I did not change the oil and egg ratio or the baking time. I wanted to see how they turned out.
I could not be happier with the result! The box yielded 18 cookies with less than 1 gram of sugar and 4 grams of carbohydrates per cookie. As with Swerve®, if you are familiar, this consistency is a bit grainier than a normal cake mix cookie, but the taste is very similar.
As always, let me know what you think in the comments below. If you try this keto recipe, what would you do differently?
Check out our downloads page for my cake-mix cookie recipe:
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