Sugar Free Low Carb Lady’s Kisses (Baci di Dama): delectable sandwich cookies. This delicious keto version has just 0.8g carbs in each.
Italian pastries are just divine, don’t you think? If you’ve been to Italy and entered any patisserie, you’ll know exactly what I mean. Trays and trays of beautiful, handcrafted, delicious morsels that leave you gawping and undecided.
Fortunately, every patisserie will sell you their mouth-watering array of treats in lovely golden take-away trays and charge you by the weight, so you can really go to town with your selection. Unfortunately, no Italian patisserie offers low carb versions of anything. Pastry chefs haven’t quite grasped the notion of carbohydrate overload. And I expect never will.
One of my favourite patisserie treats have always been Baci di Dama. Sweet, nutty, little sandwich bites that just melt in your mouth. I missed them dearly after my keto life started. But where there’s a will there’s a way. Realising that the buttery, nutty flavour couldn’t be that difficult to ketofy, I took the plunge and Sugar Free Low Carb Lady’s Kisses (Baci di Dama) were born. Absolutely delicious, moreish, keto-friendly amazeballs!
An Italian tradition carried through the centuries.
Baci di Dama find their origins in the late 1800s or early 1900s. Tortona, a town in the north-western region of Piedmont, claims that a resident chef invented the recipe. The original recipe used the world-renowned Piedmontese hazelnuts, but an almond version appeared later. Baci di Dama are not to be confused with Baci di Alassio, created in the homonymous town, as a variant with chocolate and honey.
Baci. It’s all in the name.
The Italian word ‘Baci’ means ‘kisses’. And these little beauties, looked at side-on, resemble pursed lips. In those days, dames would have been considered unpolished and ungraceful if they were to kiss with their mouths open. Hence the name Lady’s Kisses. Cute.
Sugar Free Low Carb Lady’s Kisses (Baci di Dama) ready in less than 30 minutes plus cooling time.
Of course I’m aware that I use the word easy a lot in my posts. What can I say. I do try and make recipes that are easy to follow and easy to make. My Sugar Free Low Carb Lady’s Kisses (Baci di Dama) recipe is extremely easy and extremely simple. So I make no apologies. And there’s another welcome bonus: one bowl to wash up.
TIPS: Use food-grade disposable gloves to roll the pastry – it will make the job easier (here we go again!) and quicker. Make sure that you use a very small amount of ‘dough’ for each cookie. Leave a little space between them on the oven tray, as they will expand a bit while baking.
Let the cookies cool down completely before adding the chocolate, otherwise they will crumble as you handle them.
For today’s recipe version of Baci di Dama I decided to use both ground hazelnuts and almonds. Just to mix it up a bit. Well, that’s actually a lie. Ground hazelnuts are neither readily available nor cheap. So I thought it would be a smart move to use hazelnuts and almonds in combination and save me some money. Oh, and hazelnuts are carbier than almonds, so my two-nut combo version made even more sense.
Of course you can choose to make Baci the traditional way, with just almonds or with just hazelnuts. The picture below shows a paler almond-only version I made previously.
I assure you these little cookies will taste incredible no matter what you decide to go for. All you have to do is replace the unwanted nut type weight for weight. And remember to make allowances for the higher carb content if you opt for halzelnuts alone. That’s it.
Enjoy!
- Yield: 30
- Serving: 1
- Calories: 113
- Fat: 11g
- Net Carbs: 0.8g
- Protein: 2.6g
- 100g ground hazelnuts
- 200g ground almonds (U.S. option HERE)
- 150g unsalted butter (room temperature)
- 1 large egg
- 1 tsp pure stevia powder (U.S. option HERE)
- 70g erythritol (U.S. option HERE)
- a pinch of fine Himalayan pink salt (U.S. option HERE)
- 45g unsweetened 100% dark chocolate (U.S. option HERE)
- weigh and mix dry ingredients in a large bowl.
- add whole egg and cubed butter.
- squeeze and knead with your hands quickly until everything is well blended.
- refrigerate the dough for 1 hour.
- pre-heat oven to 150C fan (160C static).
- roll a small piece of dough between your palms and place it on an oven tray lined with parchment paper, flattening it a little.
- repeat until all dough has been used up (you should end up with 60 little balls).
- bake for 12 mins, and remove from oven immediately.
- while the cookies cool down, melt chocolate in the microwave on medium-low setting in 20 secs bursts, stirring in between.
- take each cookie, spread a little melted chocolate on the flat base, then place another cookie on top.
- continue until you have made 30 sandwich cookies.
- allow chocolate to set before handling.
Metric kitchen scales are an inexpensive yet invaluable gadget to enable accurate measurement of ingredients. Store them upright in a cupboard or over your worktop and they'll only take up a tiny bit of space. Click HERE for the ones I use. For U.S. option click HERE.
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Antya, I note that you use both liquid and crystallized stevia in a lot of things. Is the stevia you use particularly lacking in aftertaste or is it just that your palate finds it inoffensive? I love erithrytol, but it’d be good to have another non-vile sweetener as an option. Regrettably, I’m a supertaster (which is really not nearly as much fun as it sounds like it ought to be), and stevia squats cloyingly in the back of my mouth and just lingers there. I end up longing to scrape my tongue clean, which is unfortunate because I really *want* to like it.
Hi Andra, yes I use stevia a lot, but mostly in combination with erythritol. Stevia has a strong after taste that is dose-dependent. Erythritol has only 70% the sweetness of table sugar, plus can give digestive issues if used excessively (over 50g in sensitive individuals) and delivers a cooling sensation. By combining them, they seem to cancel out the negative effect, or at least mask them, probably because I use a little stevia and not so much erythritol. I know there are other sweeteners, like monk fruit or tagatose, but they’re not easy to source in the UK, and in any case, you’ll notice that they’re usually not pure, but combined with other sweeteners. Most “Stevia” products that claim ‘no after taste’ in fact contain erythritol. I’ve mentioned before that the stevia crystals I used to love are no longer available. My current preference in terms of stevia brand is Better Stevia (links updated in recipe) as it has the least bitterness out of all the ones I’ve tested (and believe me I’ve tested many). Try using the exact ingredients given in the recipe and let me know what you think!
Will do! I loathe monk fruit (haven’t tried tagatose) which is a pity because, nutritionally, it’s pretty good stuff. That aftertaste though. First time I tried it, I wanted to lick a carpet afterward to get it off my tongue. You may like it just fine though. Every palate is different. As luck would have it, I don’t react at all digestively to erythritol in any amount. I was elated to make that discovery a few years ago because my reaction to xylitol is… deeply unfortunate. Great in toothpaste and oral care rinses, a disaster of comical proportions if I actually eat any of it.
LOL! You’re great!
I too am a supertaster. Lucky me. Cilantro tastes like soap, stevia has an aftertaste, etc. I made these delightful little cookies. My housemate is gobbling them up, but I am getting a big hit of erythritol cooling. I can’t use xylitol (dogs), maybe I’ll try allulose next. Antya, thank you for giving me hope that there is baking (and eating) after LCHF.
Hi Valorie, thank you so much for your input and kind comments. I don’t get erythritol cooling from these – your taste buds must be super sensitive. Maybe you could reduce the erythritol quantity and increase the stevia, to see if the result is more favourable to you. I’ve tried other ‘natural’ sweeteners, but have been thoroughly disappointed thus far. It would be wonderful if you could report back after your alternative sweeteners experiments. And I’m sure other readers would be grateful too!
The cooling effect was much less pronounced the next day. I enjoyed the cookies. When I make the recipe again (and I will!), I will try changing the sweetener proportions.
I also wanted to add that I very much appreciate that you use metric measurements in your recipes. It is so much more accurate! I am in western Canada, and like the USA, our recipes are in cups, etc. Cups are fine for liquid measurements, but dry ingredients really need to be weighed.
Glad you understand me ?, Valorie. Thank you so much.
please convert your measurements for us in the U.S?
I’m looking for a recipe app that can do automatic measurements conversion…meanwhile You could google ingredient and weight in grams to get cups equivalent. It won’t be accurate, mind you…
They look delicious, can’t wait to try them.
🙂