Cute Sugar Free Keto Gingerbread Cats

Cute Sugar Free Keto Gingerbread Cats. 1.4g carbs for each large cookie.

Before the perfect cookie police gets involved, let me just confess here and now that I am fully aware of my atrocious piping skills. Please leave me alone. If I’d made these as a customer order, or to sell in a bakery, I would have had to either rethink my strategy or hone in my artistry. But I’m a home baker and keto magician. My aim in life isn’t to produce perfectly decorated bakes, but to create perfectly baked flavours. Big difference. Sometimes I achieve both. Most of the time I don’t. And I don’t care.

And you know what? These cutesy gingerbread cats taste so good that nobody will mind if YOUR piping is as sloppy as mine.

I absolutely hate it!!! No matter how many YouTube videos I watch, I just can’t do it!!! And trying to pipe water icing is particularly frustrating, because icing ‘sugar’ dries up and crystallises in the piping bag while you appear to squeeze out water drops. Aaargh!!!! I had to repeatedly scoop it out of the piping bag, put it back in the bowl, and mix it with more water.

It took me 5 piping bags and an utter kitchen disaster zone to craft my 16 cats. Next time I will use hot water and try to dissolve the icing ‘sugar’, rather than just mix it. Maybe it will make the job easier. Failing that, there’s always melted chocolate. Just as messy, but not as difficult to play with. I didn’t use it only because I wanted to avoid making this gingerbread overly high in calories and carbs.

If you want to draw my Cute Sugar Free Keto Gingerbread Cats with water icing, as I did, you have two options: either use Sukrin Icing 'Sugar' or head to my easy recipe and Make Your Own. All you do is stir water into a small bowl of icing sugar, making sure you add no more than 1 teaspoon at a time, until you get the desired consistency.

How to Design and Make Cute Sugar Free Keto Gingerbread Cats

As you can see from the photos below, I used a 5' happy gingerbread man cookie cutter (13cm x 9cm) (U.S. option HERE) and turned it upside down. Indeed. From man to cat in an instant. Then I placed it over a sheet of paper and traced the contour. I sketched my cat image and that’s it. Template ready.

The recipe involves my usual one-bowl, no-mess, minimal-washing-up, technique. Hand-whisk all the dry ingredients to make sure they’re nicely mixed. Add the butter and work the mixture into crumbs. Crack a whole egg directly over the mix, work it until well incorporated, and shape into a ball. Wrap it in cling film and leave it in the fridge to firm up for at least 4-5 hours (best left overnight).

This dough becomes sticky very quickly, which can be a bit of a pain when you’re trying to roll it out, as it will want to stick to the parchment paper The best thing to do is to work the dough, as quickly as you can, using 1/4 at a time while the rest stays in the fridge. Also, roll it out with only light pressure, and flip it onto a fresh sheet of parchment before you cut the shapes out.

How I Work with Sticky Doughs

Firstly, I put the chilled dough piece onto a sheet of parchment paper. Using a miniature silicone rolling pin, I roll it out to about 1/2cm thickness. I then flip it onto another sheet and gently peel away the sheet now at the top. At this point I cut out my shapes and I transfer them to a lined baking tray, lifting them up with a flexible spatula. Finally, I scoop up the remnants, I combine them with a fresh piece of cold dough and I carry on.

If all this sounds like too much faffing, don’t despair. When I don’t care about gingerbread cats, or men, I shape round cookies by hand (using disposable gloves will help with the stickiness), which is less precise in terms of thickness but incredibly quick. If that’s what you’d prefer, aim for 16 cookies with a diameter of approximately 9cm. The picture above shows a batch I made recently. The lines were made with a small dessert fork, by pressing lightly and sliding across.

Whatever you decide to do with this amazing dough, and whether you end up with Cute Sugar Free Keto Gingerbread Cats or not, you won’t be disappointed with the flavour and texture.

Enjoy!

CUTE SUGAR FREE KETO GINGERBREAD CATS

Author: Antya

Nutrition

Yield: 16

Serving: 1
Calories: 132

Fat: 10g
Net Carbs: 1.4g
Protein: 8g

Recipe type: Biscuits

Cuisine: Ketogenic. LCHF. Low Carb. Sugar Free. Grain Free. Gluten Free.

Prep time: 30 mins

Cook time: 12 mins

Total time: 42 mins

Gingerbread men or gingerbread cats? Either way, just 1.4g carbs and incredibly yummy.

Ingredients

1 large egg
100g unsalted butter
80g ground almonds (U.S. option HERE)
200g fine almond flour (U.S.option HERE)
80g erythritol (U.S. option HERE)
1 tsp pure stevia powder (U.S.option HERE)
1 TBSP ground ginger
pinch of fine Himalayan pink salt (U.S. option HERE)
1 tsp ground cinnamon
pinch of nutmeg
pinch of cloves
1 tsp baking powder
grated zest of 1 orange
grated zest of 1 lemon
40g Sukrin Icing 'Sugar' (U.S. alternative HERE) or Make your Own

Instructions

combine all dry ingredients except icing 'sugar', then add butter and work until crumbly.
incorporate egg, mixing with a fork and then by hand to form a dough.
refrigerate 4-5 hours minimum (best overnight), then lay over parchment paper and flatten with a rolling pin to about ½cm thickness (read my method in blog post ˆ )
pre-heat oven to 150C fan (170C static).
cut out desired shapes, place them on lined oven tray, and bake for 12-13 minutes, until golden around the edges.
allow gingerbread to cool down completely before decorating with water icing (icing 'sugar'+ water) or whatever you prefer.

Notes

I used a 5" (13 x 9 cm) cookie cutter. Click HERE for U.S. option.

The dough will be quite sticky. Best if you work using ¼ at a time, keeping the rest refrigerated.

For a crispier result, bake for up to 5 more minutes, then leave inside the oven, door ajar, until cold. Alternatively, allow the gingerbread to cool completely and bake again for 5-8 minutes.

Instead of decorating with water icing, you could use royal icing, melted chocolate, or butter frosting.

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 in the UK. For U.S. option click HERE.