Sweet Temptation

This morning I hit a reality check on the scale. Three days of eating whatever looked good (read lots of fruit and a couple of helpings of cobbler) did not do me any favors. Of course, part of the problem is that not everyone around me is trying to eat what I'm eating. A good example is my college-student son (aka tall, dark, and shaggy), who - with the abandon of a quick metabolism - indulges in pizza, potato chips, and cookies on a regular basis. (I know what you're thinking, but I'm not the food police.) Since he had a tough break over the weekend, I wanted to surprise him with one of his favorite treats - homemade sandwich cookies. (He really likes the cake mix sugar cookies with cream cheese icing.) As the oven pre-heated and I stirred the batter together, I contemplated how to keep his cookie indulgence from becoming my own, and decided to make some biscotti (one of my favorite treats) to go with my daily iced coffee. Having settled on my own sweet treat, I managed not to eat a bite (no, I didn't even lick the bowl, the beaters, the scraper, or my fingers) of Jade's gift.

However, once his cookies were finished I couldn't decide which recipe to try for my own - so I made two batches as a taste test for future cookie endeavors. (I particularly enjoy biscotti to fit the season, so I usually make a variation to suit my mood. For example, at Christmas I add chopped candied cherries and white chocolate with green sprinkles. In the summer, I like dried blueberries with lemon zest. You get the picture.) Since I was testing both recipes today, I decided to stick to plain vanilla as a baseline.

The first recipe I tried is called Laurie Pila's Low Carb Biscotti and was posted in the community recipes area of nigella.com http://www.nigella.com/recipes/view/laurie-pilas-low-carb-biscotti-from-www-lauriepila-com-446 .

Ingredients

½ cup almond meal

¼ cup soy flour                                               

2 tablespoons softened butter                                               

½ cup sweetener

1 medium egg                                              

½ teaspoon vanilla extract                                               

1 teaspoon baking powder                                               

½ teaspoon star anise

½ teaspoon lemon zest

 

Method

 

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Mix together the softened butter and Splenda. Add the egg and vanilla extract and blend until smooth. (Use an electric hand-blender for best results.)

Add the almond flour, soy flour, baking powder, anise and lemon zest. Refrigerate this mixture for 15 minutes.

The dough will be very loose. Form the dough into a log on a parchment paper lined cookie tray. Flatten the log to 3/4 inch thickness.

Bake for 25 minutes, or until light golden. Remove from oven and let sit for 15 minutes. Cut each log into 1/4 inch slices on an angle.

Place these slices back on the cookie sheet and finish baking for 10 more minutes. Let cool for 15 minutes, then serve!

 

Because I made a baseline cookie for testing purposes, I did not add the anise or the lemon zest. In addition, I used liquid sucralose (which has 0 net carbs) instead of powdered sweetener. I also used carbalose flour instead of the soy flour because I didn't have the soy.

This is the baked initial log. It was easy to cut, and I only lost one slice to crumbling.

 

Here are the cut slices ready to go back into the oven for baking round two.

Here is the final product. The cookies are surprisingly tender, yet chewy. My husband and I both enjoyed them and would eat them again. The carb count total on these is .66 grams per cookie. (The entire batch is 7.95 net carbs with 2 grams coming from the almond meal, 4.75 grams coming from the carbalose flour, and 1.2 grams coming from the baking powder.) I ended up with 12 cookies from this recipe. If I make it again, I will certainly at least double it.

The next batch came from Laura Dolson (http://lowcarbdiets.about.com/od/cookies/r/low-carb-biscotti.html) at About.com.

Ingredients:

1 stick (1/2 cup) butter at room temperature

3 cups almond meal

1 tablespoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

2 eggs

2 teaspoons almond extract

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

sugar substitute equal to one cup sugar. Note: zero-carb liquid is preferred -- I used 24 drops of a concentrated form of sucralose (see note)

 

Preparation:

 

Preheat oven to 350 F. Cover a 10" X 15" baking sheet with parchment paper or a silicone mat, and lightly grease with butter or oil.
Mix butter, almond meal, baking powder, and salt together in a large mixing bowl. Beat until fully combined -- it should glom together.
Add wet ingredients: eggs, extracts, and sugar substitute. Beat until well-combined. The batter will be fairly stiff. (Note: I developed this recipe using the concentrated liquid sucralose. I'm guessing almost any sugar substitute would work. If you are using a powdered type, add it with the almond meal at the beginning, and be sure to add the carbs to the total.).
Let batter sit for 5 minutes or so; the almond meal will absorb some of the remaining liquid. It should form a soft, but workable dough. 
Turn the dough onto the baking sheet and form it into a rectangle about 1/2" - 3/4" high, 5 inches wide, and 14 inches long..
Bake until very lightly browned on top -- about 22-25 minutes. Remove from the oven and turn the oven down to 325. Let the cookies cool for 5-10 minutes, then cut into slices about 3/4 inch wide. Lay the slices on their sides, and return to the oven for about 15 minutes, until the sides are lightly browned.

For this recipe, I used only vanilla extract (to make it comparable to the first one), and I chilled the dough before creating the log. The dough was pretty wet and a little sticky, but the final result was excellent.

 

Here are the cookies (which are about twice the size of the other batch because the log was much larger) before their second time in the oven. The recipe's author suggests cutting the cookies in half to make smaller portions, but I thought they were pretty in the larger size. (They also look more luxurious to me.)

These cookies are also tender and chewy. Though I didn't see much difference between the two recipes, my husband liked this set of cookies better. Once the decision was made, I decided to spruce them up with a little dark chocolate. (I used one ounce of unsweetened baking chocolate melted in the microwave with a little Crisco and liquid sucralose.) The total carb count for these lovelies is 1.l2 grams each - including the chocolate. The total for the batch is 12 grams for the almond flour, 3.6 grams for the baking powder, and 2 grams for the chocolate on about 10 cookies. I ended up with 17 large cookies in all, but only put chocolate on some of them. Without chocolate, the large cookies are .92 net carbs each. In addition, they are about twice the size of the cookies in the first batch. Thus, these are slightly lower in carbs (.46 compared to .66 grams) for the same size cookie.

Ultimately, I am saving the second recipe for future use and feel confident I'll have an excellent treat with my coffee for the coming seasons. Enjoy!