The keto diet has become popular in recent years - hundreds of celebrities swear by it, it helps to boost your energy levels, and most keto recipes are actually incredibly delicious. A lot of non-keto dieters actually prefer to choose keto choices off restaurant menus, because, as they say, they “get to the point’ without unnecessary carbs.
Keto recipes are low-carb and high-fat, but it does not mean they cannot include any sweet treats! You just have to add the right ingredients (for example, replace sugar with a sweetener of your choice).
You can easily prepare keto peanut butter cookies with 72% dark chocolate chips using our recipe - it’s amazing, because you’d think that baking means carbs by definition, right? Wrong! Before we proceed to bake, let us explain what benefits you will get from keto-friendly food!
What Does "Keto" Mean?
The word "ketogenic" (or "keto," for short) originates from the small fuel molecules your body produces - "ketones." When there is too little glucose in your blood, your organism treats this source as an alternative.
When you consume very few calories or very few carbs, your liver has to derive ketones from fat. These molecules are treated as a source to produce energy for your body - particularly, for the brain.
As the brain works in very complex ways, it needs a lot of energy on a daily basis! Fat is not enough to power it up, and it needs either glucose or ketones to function effectively.
When you switch to a ketogenic diet and use sugar-free products to prepare your food, your body needs to burn more fat. Due to significant insulin level reduction, fat-burning can be significantly boosted. At this point, your fat stores can be more easily accessed and burned.
When you are trying to lose weight, such a diet can be a great help. Moreover, it also has other benefits, including a steady energy supply and decreased hunger. Thanks to the ketogenic diet, you can avoid sugar peaks and valleys that can be a problem when you consume high-carb food. It can also be helpful in keeping you alert and concentrated.
A metabolic state when your organism produces ketones is called ketosis. One can achieve it in the shortest time by fasting (yes, we mean eating nothing), but nobody can do that all the time.
On the other hand, a ketogenic diet can also lead to ketosis, and you can be on for a long time. And you do not have to resign from delicious food - you can, for example, make keto peanut butter cookies with dark chocolate following our recipe and enjoy a sweet treat with your family and friends!
Prep Time: 10 minutes
Cook Time: 10 minutes
Total Time: 24 minutes
Servings: 14 cookies
Keto Peanut Butter Cookies Recipe - List of Ingredients
In order to prepare our low-carb peanut butter cookies, you need to prepare the following ingredients:
- ½ cup unsalted butter, melted
- 6 tablespoons keto-friendly sugar substitute (granulated sweetener of your choice)
- 1 large egg
- 2 cups almond flour
- 7 ounces dark chocolate chips
- 1 cup peanut butter (best if it is natural, salted, and crunchy - and it has to be unsweetened!)
- ½ teaspoon kosher salt
Keto Peanut Butter Cookies Recipe - Instructions
Preheat your oven to 350ºF.
Line your baking sheet with parchment paper (or even two can be better).
Take a large bowl and put there your granulated sugar substitute, crunchy peanut butter, egg, salt, melted butter, and almond flour. Mix them up until you see they have a well-combined structure.
Divide the cookie dough into 14 balls on the baking sheet (or sheets) with a 1/4 cup ice cream scoop (or a cookie scoop, if you have one).
Flatten every keto cookie with a fork and put the dark chocolate chips on top of them.
Bake your keto cookies for 10-12 minutes, until you see them turning slightly golden and feel the tempting smell.
Take the peanut butter cookies out from the oven and move them to a wire rack to let them cool. Make sure you wait at least 5 minutes before transferring them, so they have time to set and don’t fall apart!
Now, you can enjoy your treat!
Also, if you want to keep your keto peanut butter cookies for later, you can place them inside an airtight container and store them at room temperature for up to 4 days.
Keto Peanut Butter Cookies Recipe - Additional Tips
To provide you with a little more tips concerning our keto peanut butter cookie recipe, we have prepared additional information below. Take a look at it!
- You have quite a few options to choose a sweetener. As they are keto peanut butter cookies, you should not use regular sugar. Fortunately, there are many alternatives on the market, so it is not that hard to achieve. One of the best solutions for baking can be erythritol because it does not have a bitter after taste, and it dissolves easily. You can also use, for instance, Swerve or monk fruit sweetener.
- Almond flour is not obligatory. Almond flour provides the keto peanut butter cookies with excellent texture and depth of flavor. However, if you are allergic to almonds, or you simply lack this ingredient, you can still follow the rest of the recipe and obtain a good result as well.
- Keep in mind to get sugar-free peanut butter. To make keto peanut butter cookies, you need to avoid sugar. For this reason, you need to read the label of the peanut butter you choose carefully - it may happen they have some hidden sugars. Organic peanut butter might be the best choice in this matter.
- You can try to use a flax egg if you want to make this recipe vegan. We have used a regular egg in our keto peanut butter cookies recipe, but you can also try using alternatives, such as a flax egg, and it should work perfectly fine.
- You can add some vanilla extract if you want. Thanks to vanilla, your peanut butter cookies will achieve a fluffier structure and additional flavor. However, you need to be careful and check if it is sugar-free for sure because only in this way can this recipe be aligned with a ketogenic diet.
- Powdered peanut butter is not suitable for this recipe. Some people may feel like adding powdered peanut butter to their cookies, but unfortunately, it is not a suitable product for this recipe.
- You can resign from adding any flour, but the cookies will not be crispy then. Without any flour at all, our keto peanut butter cookies with dark chocolate will still be tasty, but they will have a rather rubbery than crispy texture.
Why Is It Worth Using Santa Barbara Chocolate Chips in This Recipe?
We always take care of the highest quality of every product we offer you. For this reason, by choosing our 72% dark chocolate as an addition to your peanut butter cookies, you will know they are natural, healthy, and tasty.
The most significant factor influencing the quality of our chips is the shade-grown rainforest cacao. We do not add any soy lecithin, vanilla, or gluten - our dark chocolate is produced with just 3 organic ingredients. If you are searching for a real bittersweet taste suitable for the ketogenic diet, our product is the answer.
What is more, we also pay attention to production ethics and our planet's condition. As a result, you can be sure our products are environmentally-friendly and derived from fair trade cacao farms.
These dark chocolate chips are designed for baking - using them, you will not have to break a chocolate bar, but you will be able to just conveniently grab as many pieces from the bag as you want to have in your keto peanut butter cookies. We are sure you will like their genuine taste in your baking. Enjoy our recipe and treat yourself and your loved ones with delicious cookies!