We are experiencing a sort of cupcake Renaissance lately, what with the hive mind’s collective discovery of things like nut flours and tapioca starch. But sorely lacking, as far as I can see, are examples of cupcakes that keep your net carb count as low as possible without resorting to gut-disrupting ingredients like pure gluten flour.
So as promised, here my first ultra-low-carb cupcake recipe, guaranteed to keep you in ketogenesis as long as you don’t eat the whole batch. The first of many, I can assure you, now that I have my rapid cupcake prototyping machine.
Net carbs: 3g per cupcake (recipe makes 12). Frosting brings it up to about 5g usable carbohydrates.
Credit goes to Carolyn at All Day I Dream About Food (dot com) for coming up with a red velvet cupcakes and donuts recipe that I drew from heavily when creating this cupcake. And for having way better pictures than I do.
Red Velvet Keto Cupcakes
Print recipe
| Portions | 12 |
| Prep time | 20 minutes |
| Allergy | Egg, Milk |
| Dietary | Gluten Free, Ultra Low Carb |
| Meal type | Dessert, Snack |
| Misc | Child Friendly, Freezable, Pre-preparable, Serve Cold, Serve Hot |
| By author | Naomi Most |
Ingredients
dry
- 2 cups almond flour (best/finest quality you can get (it matters))
- 1/4 cup splenda for baking
- 1/4 cup whey protein powder
- 2 tablespoons cocoa powder
- 1 teaspoon xanthan gum
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
wet
- 5 tablespoons cottage cheese (or cream cheese)
- 1/4 cup butter (softened)
- 3 eggs (large)
- 10 drops liquid stevia extract
- 1/4 cup almond milk
- 1 dash red icing coloring (or 15 drops of red liquid food coloring)
wet (Optional)
- 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
Note
Quality of almond flour matters here. Make sure you acquire a fine-grained almond flour (not almond meal) made from blanched almonds. I use JK Gourmet brand almond flour.
Directions
| Step 1 | |
| Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. | |
| Step 2 | |
 Blend together the butter and cottage cheese (or cream cheese) and almond milk. Using a high-speed blender like the Magic Bullet achieves the best results to break up cottage cheese clumps. Also add in the stevia, splenda for baking, and vanilla at this time. Set aside. | |
| Step 3 | |
 In a medium bowl, sift together all dry ingredients. Make sure to break up all small lumps. (Most almond flours will be a bit clumpy.) | |
| Step 4 | |
 In a separate large bowl, lightly whisk the eggs. Pour in the wet ingredients from the blender, and whisk to mix. | |
| Step 5 | |
 Use an oyster fork or pair of chopsticks, and dip the end of the utensil into the frosting coloring. You really only need a small amount to color the entire batch. See the attached photo. | |
| Step 6 | |
 Stir the frosting color into the wet ingredients. Whisk to let color suffuse the mixture completely. | |
| Step 7 | |
 Now you will combine the wet and dry ingredients. Pour HALF of the dry ingredients into the wet ingredient bowl. Stir to mix thoroughly before adding the rest of the dry stuff in. Mix well without beating. | |
| Step 8 | |
 When fully mixed, batter should be brick red and fairly sticky. | |
| Step 9 | |
 Deploy 1/4 cup sized lumps of batter into muffin tins lined with cupcake liners. Put in the oven. | |
| Step 10 | |
 Bake for 12 to 15 minutes in preheated oven, checking for doneness at the 12 minute mark. If the middle seems mushy, the cupcakes need more time. Remove when a cupcake passes the toothpick test (an inserted toothpick comes out clean). | |
| Step 11 | |
|
Let cool; frost with something tasty, like basic butter-cream frosting! | |
Special Ingredients
Sweet Leaf vanilla creme flavor liquid stevia
Excuses
I promised this recipe a week ago, on July 4th. Wouldn’t that have been convenient? But I screwed up the first “confirmation batch” badly enough that I had to do them over again, and then ran out of time while finishing the second “confirmation batch”. Which meant having to hold off on doing the frosting until the next day.
On the bright side, that first screw-up batch gave me a clue for how to produce some truly excellent chocolate cake, which I am proud to say that I have since perfected and will be posting the recipe in a week or two, after some more savory submissions go up. (I want to make sure I sprinkle in foods other than cake and icing on The Hardcore Chef, considering I don’t intend to be “the hardcore bakery”, which has sort of a different sense to it, eh.)
