I love fall, and pumpkin, and sugar free baking, and thus… low carb pumpkin spice shortbread! Okay, so “low carb pumpkin spice shortbread” was not the first thing that came to my mind when I woke up this morning… but, here we are, just a quick craving later.
I really wanted to add some nutritional value to these bad boys (though, cinnamon has some fabulous blood sugar regulating effects), and so I mixed a 1/4 cup of pumpkin puree into the batter. This does increase the carb count slightly, and makes them a little less crispy than they could be. If you wanted to have the crispiest shortbread possible, I would definitely recommend going whole hog and just putting a full stick of butter into the recipe. Of course, this eliminates the”pumpkin,” but really – it’s the spice that imparts most of the flavor!
You can see below, that I may have gone a little batty, and cut these into adorable Halloween shapes…and also into fall leaves and acorns. This is an easy enough recipe to roll out and cut, so why not? Plus, those leaves, acorns, bats and cats make the perfect accompaniment for a nice, hot mug of tea…or coffee… or mulled wine?
Some notes on making low carb pumpkin spice shortbread:
- these can be formed by hand into little patties, or cut using adorable Halloween or fall cookie cutters – guess which route I took…
- I used pumpkin pie spice, but Chinese five spice, or just cinnamon could easily be used in its place
- I baked these for 25 minutes at , but you could probably get away with 18 minutes at 350ºF
- half the fun of these is decorating them – yes, the frosting has carbs, but how much are you gonna put on there?!
- for a crispier cookie, eliminate the pumpkin puree, and double the butter to a full stick (YUM)
Ingredients
- 1/4 cup (1/2 stick) salted butter, softened
- 1/4 cup pumpkin puree
- 2 eggs
- 3/4 cup coconut flour
- 2 tsp cinnamon (or pumpkin pie spice)
- 15 drops liquid stevia
Method
- Preheat oven to 300ºF.
- Beat together butter, pumpkin, stevia and cinnamon/spice blend.
- Mix in two eggs until thoroughly combined.
- Stir in coconut flour, and mix until all the flour is incorporated. The dough should be easy to work with, not too sticky, and a little moist.
- Roll to about 1/4" thickness, and cut into shapes with adorable cookie cutters - or mini ones! Incidentally, I own both of those cookie cutter sets...
- Alternatively, roll into balls and flatten into patties.
- Bake for about 25 minutes, until the bottom and edges are golden
- Pull from oven, let cool and enjoy!
