Keto and Low-Carb Baking Tips and Tricks

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A few years ago, I started to notice that more and more culinary blogs published low-carb recipes. Curious, I started baking low-carb desserts. 

After some initial failures, finally, my carbivore husband didn’t notice any difference between a traditional cake and a low-carb cake. 

The low-carb diet is a diet that limits carbohydrates consumptions. Instead of eating pasta, traditional bread, rice, sugary foods, the focus shifts on natural proteins, fats, and vegetables with fewer carbohydrates and a higher percentage of fat.

The low-carb diet means under 50g net carbs per day, and a moderately low-carb diet means under 100g net carbs per day, where Net Carbs = Total Carbohydrates – Fiber – Sugar Alcohols (if applicable).

The keto diet is a variant of a low-carb diet, with under 20g (might vary to 25g or 30g) net carbs per day with moderate protein and high fat. Moderate protein means a protein intake of 1.2-2.0 grams per kg of body weight for most people.

More in-depth articles and guides are on Diet Doctor about low carb, Diet Doctor about keto, Healthline’s guide, WholesumYum’s guide, a how-to stock a keto pantry, the keto subreddit, protein in keto, visual guides for vegetables, fruits, nuts, snacks, alcohol, fat sauces, drinks, 20g carbs vs 50g carbs, sweeteners, cheese.

As with any lifestyle change, do your research and make sure to discuss your plans with your doctor.

My top resources for low-carb and keto recipes

Minimalism and low-carb baking

Once I got the hang of dealing with gluten-free, sugar-free desserts, I realised that I need a few good, essential recipes.

With a good recipe for a sponge cake and a frosting, I can easily make all kinds of flavoured cakes with different extracts. Blueberries, raspberries, chocolate chips, nuts, lemon, and poppyseed can quickly transform a basic muffin recipe.

Tips and tricks 

Low-carb, gluten-free, sugar-free baking is an entirely different world from traditional baking. Low-carb batters and doughs might be thicker, less elastic, more absorbent because low-carb flours are high in fat, high in moisture and lack gluten.

The low-carb flour alternatives are nut flours (almond flour, hazelnut flour, pecan flour, walnut flour, etc.), seed flours (sunflower seed flour, pumpkin seed flour, peanut flour, sesame flour, lupin flour), coconut flour, or zero carbs flour such as ground pork rinds.

The most used low-carb flour is almond flour. If you grind almonds with their skin on, you get an almond meal with a coarser texture and darker in colour. Even grinding blanched almonds with no skin might not result in an almond flour that is as fine as the commercially ground almond flour.

Another well used low-carb flour is coconut flour. Coconut flour can NOT be obtained from grinding coconut flakes. Coconut flour is ground defatted leftovers from making coconut milk. Coconut flakes are made from coconut meat, which is dried and ground.

Coconut flour is highly absorbent and can be challenging to work with. Swapping almond flour with coconut flour is a very tricky business (less coconut flour, more eggs, more fat, more liquid).  

It is not unusual for low-carb recipes, especially those with coconut flour, to use six or seven eggs. To avoid an eggy flavour, make sure your eggs are at room temperature. If you keep your eggs in the fridge, pop them into a bowl of hot tap water for 3 minutes. 

Another tip that helps against eggy flavour is to let baked items cool on a cooling rack so that all the sides cool equally.

It is essential to have a kitchen scale and try recipes specifically low-carb as all-purpose flour is not easily replaced on a 1:1 ratio with low-carb flours. 

Room temperature becomes important as most low-carb baking recipes require high amounts of fat (butter, cream cheese, eggs, heavy cream, etc.), and these ingredients need to be adequately mixed. Take them out from the fridge at least 30 minutes before baking to warm them a bit.

If the recipes ask for softened butter, that means if you press your finger on softened butter, it leaves a dent. 

Low-carb flours have more fat and fibre than regular wheat flour, so that baked goods can be denser compared to traditional baked goods. That means gluten-free baked treats need more leavener to keep them light (even so far as one or two TABLEspoons of baking powder).

Use aluminium-free baking powder to avoid baked treats to get a metallic aftertaste or a green or blue tint.

As regular milk has too many carbs for the low-carb diet, swap regular dairy milk with heavy cream diluted with water, unsweetened coconut milk, or unsweetened almond milk.

For dairy-free options replace whey protein with egg white protein. Replace softened butter with softened coconut oil or softened ghee. Replace melted butter with liquid oil. Replace heavy cream with full-fat coconut milk or coconut cream.

As low-carb batters tend to be stickier, prep your pans properly. Stella Parks’s guide on how to choose cake pans is worth a read. I have never used glass trays for baking low-carb as glass is not as good at conducting heat as metal trays.

Glass trays also stay hot long after you remove the dish from the oven, which might result in over baked goods. I prep with melted butter or melted coconut oil the muffin paper cases too.

Gluten and gluten-free options

Gluten is a protein naturally found in some grains, including wheat, barley, and rye. Usually, there is no gluten in low-carb recipes (some low-carb recipes might have vital wheat gluten as an ingredient).

Until I started baking low-carb, I didn’t realise how helpful is gluten in baking: it helps with elasticity when the dough rises, holds the baked structure together so it doesn’t collapse while it cools down, gives a chewy texture, absorbs and retains moisture.

How to replace such a vital ingredient as gluten in low-carb baking?

Eggs act as binders in cakes or muffins, adding moisture and fat.

Protein powders such as unsweetened whey protein powder or egg protein in case of dairy allergies, help baked goods rise and keep their shape.

Binding agents such as xanthan gum, guar gum, psyllium husks, chia seeds, flax seeds help with firming, less crumbling, more thickening, giving overall better texture. 

My favourite binding agent is xanthan gum. I add some xanthan gum even when the recipe does not include it, as the texture and the mouth feel are much improved.

Some recipes for cookies require gelatin, as gelatin helps with the chewiness factor given by gluten.

Then, there is fathead dough, which uses mozzarella cheese, cream cheese, eggs, low carb flours. The fathead dough produces an astonishing stretchy dough with a chewy texture, indistinguishable from traditional pizza bases.

The fathead recipe comes from the Fathead movie, a 2009 documentary. In this documentary, Tom Naughton sticks to a moderately low carb diet of fast food for 30 days. The result is that Tom not only loses weight, bt also has lower blood cholesterol levels. The documentary is on Youtube.

To make baked goods rise, creaming butter with sweetener before adding eggs help create tiny air pockets and provide a light, fluffy texture to baked treats.

Lower oven temperatures are required as low-carb treats use more fat, and low temperatures help goods to cook correctly and maintain their shape once finished.

Another tip to help with the lack of gluten is to let goods cool properly as low-carb baked items continue to firm up as they cool. Especially with cookies and crackers, these treats will only start to get crisp while they cool down.

If the dough is too sticky and you need to roll it, try these options: roll the dough between two sheets of baking paper, or put the dough in the freezer for a few minutes and try rolling it again.

Sugar substitutes

Stevia, a natural sweetener from Stevia rebaudiana plant, is hundreds of times sweeter than sugar. As stevia is so concentrated, only a tiny amount is necessary for a recipe. However, being so rich in sweetness, stevia doesn’t add much in terms of volume to a recipe, nor can stevia whip air bubbles into butter or egg whites. Overall, stevia doesn’t help with the texture, as it exclusively adds sweetness.

Erythritol is a naturally-occurring sugar alcohol found in fruits and fermented foods, considered 60-70% as sweet as sugar. Despite its name, sugar alcohols are neither sugars nor alcohols but share a similar chemical structure with sugars and alcohols. Erythritol can have a mouth-cooling feel.

I tend to mix erythritol and some drops of stevia as they complement each other quite nicely with no cooling aftertaste.

I either buy granulated erythritol, icing erythritol from iherb or Amazon and now Foods stevia glycerite from iherb (I added my referral code to the iherb links). I prefer to buy icing erythritol, but you can make your own by grinding granular erythritol in a dry coffee grinder. 

Xylitol, another sugar alcohol naturally present in some fruits and vegetables, is highly toxic to dogs. Some suggest assuming that xylitol is toxic to cats too. Make sure you are careful if you have pets around you.

If you didn’t do any baking with keto ingredients before, start simple with easy recipes such as muffins. In another article, Keto and low-carb treats, I provide all the keto and low-carb recipes that have my family’s seal of approval.

Stressed Spelled Backwards is Desserts.

 Loretta LaRoche