Of all the recipes made with nut flours these days, many are a poor shadow of the wheat flour recipes they mean to replace. Not this! Pecan sandies are all about nuts in the first place, and this crunchy salty-sweet cookie is a natural and delicious sugar-free, gluten-free treat.
Replacing flour is a tough game! I’ve been on a low-carb and gluten-free diet since 2015, and have tried countless recipes which try to imitate the texture of flour and gluten using nut and coconut flours, along with rice flours and other substitutes. While I admire these attempts, most of these recipes simply remind me what I’m missing, highlighting with each bite the gap between these imitations and the real thing! Meanwhile, the few gluten-free innovations which really do impress on taste and texture (Mod Pizza’s cauliflower crust I’m talking to you) do so with so many carbs (87 grams!) that they can’t be a regular part of my diet.
So my advice is to stop trying to recreate all-purpose flour centric recipes, and instead bake something naturally suited to these ingredients. With the browned butter flavors and the light shortbread-style crunch you truly won’t feel like you’re missing out at all, compared to the real deal. All this recipe takes is a little planning to allow time for the nuts to roast and cool, for browned butter to cool, and for the finished cookies to cool at the end. Good things come to low-carb bakers who wait!
Besides the browned butter, the other secret ingredient is PureCane TM sweetener, a natural sugar-free sweetener which tastes remarkably identical to white and brown sugar, made from fermented sugar cane.
I’ve worked to perfect this recipe over the last year along with my family, and would love to hear your feedback, both from the low-carb and gluten-free crowd, and anyone else as well.
Sugar Free Pecan Sandies with Brown Butter
By Published: August 5, 2022
Of all the recipes made with nut flours these days, many are a poor shadow of the wheat flour recipes they mean to replace. Not this! …
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup (8 ounces) grass-fed butter
- 1 cup (4 ounces) roasted pecans
- 1/4 cup (1.3 ounces) PureCane white sweetener (or substitute erythritol)
- 1/4 cup (1.3 ounces) PureCane brown sweetener (or substitute brown sugar flavored erythritol)
- 3/4 cups (3 ounces) almond flour
- 3/4 cups (3 ounces) cashew flour (or substitute more almond flour)
- 1/2 teaspoon sea salt
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
Instructions
- Melt the butter in a large heavy-bottomed pot over medium-high heat. Continue cooking until foaming has subsided and the butter separates and turns a medium brown (tilt the pan occasionally to check color). Remove from heat, and allow it to cool to room temperature, about an hour. NOTE: If you haven’t yet roasted the pecans, now is a good time to do so, as they will need to be roasted (350 degrees F for 5-10 minutes) and cooled before proceeding, for the best result.
- Pre-heat the oven to 325 degrees F.
- In a food processor, process half of the pecans, the granulated sweeteners, and the salt until chopped finely. If you don’t have a food processor a blender can be used instead.
- Add the almond flour, cashew flour, and remaining pecans, pulsing 5-10 times to coarsely chop the pecans and mix the ingredients.
- Stir the vanilla into the cooled browned butter, then add the liquid into the food processor or blender. Pulse several times to combine, then use a spatula or wooden spoon to gently finish making the mixture uniform, without allowing it to become gooey (it should remain crumbly at this stage).
- Prepare two cookie sheets (uninsulated) lined with silicon mats or parchment paper. Use a spoon or measuring cup (1/8 cup works well, but this can be made smaller or larger) to scoop out a heaping portion of dough. Press it down on the cookie sheet with the palm of your hand, to form it into a dome shape. Fill the sheets evenly, and place in the oven on two racks positioned middle-high and middle-low.
- Bake for 7 minutes, then switch the position of the sheets and continue baking for about 7 minutes more, until golden brown around the edges.
- Remove from the oven and leave the cookies on the pan to cool completely before attempting to remove them. Store in an airtight container for up to 3 weeks.
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