Peanut Butter & Chocolate Chip Blondies – Gluten-Free & Keto

I flirt with the idea of a ketogenic diet.  I appreciate the health benefits from eliminating sugar and refined grains, but still am not prepared to fully commit.  This, after successfully dropping several L-Bs nearly ten years ago on a keto diet.

Back then it was hard going.  Fortunately I enjoy cooking, as there was only insipid high-protein packaged fare if I didn’t cook for myself; and forget about anything sweet worth eating.  It was all sickly-sweet, artificially flavored, preservative-laden, barely fit for the rubbish.

Fast forward and today the “keto lifestyle” is in the mainstream.  You can thank the keto-craze for cauliflower-everything – rice, mashed faux-tatoes, pizza crusts, and even Buffalo bites (faux wings).

And with the mainstream comes a proliferation of products and recipes by creative chefs, bakers and home cooks.  Especially. The. Bakers.  I’ve now got a small collection of keto baking books and I follow a handful of keto recipe blogs.

Over time I’ve tried keto-brownies, keto-puddings, keto-cookies.  Some were barely OK, some were destined straight to the compost bin.  Until. This. Gluten-free Peanut Butter & Chocolate Chip Blondies from Paola and her gnom-gnom.com site.

The information and notes for her recipes are helpful and entertaining.  She’s done the hard work and experimentation for substituting nut flours (mostly almond and coconut flours) for wheat.  And the baker-geek in me appreciates her explanations on why additional tweaks are needed to produce near-facsimiles of wheat and sugar classics.  Her photography and videos are drool-worthy too.

Not keto?  No worries.  Simply replace the sweetener 1-for-1 with sugar and use regular chocolate chips.  And these remain gluten-free, with a light, cake-like texture, and plenty of the peanut butter and chocolate pairing we love.

The good news is these mix up in one bowl and in quick order.  If you’ve got a craving for a not-too-sweet treat, you’ll have it in about one hour.  The bad news will be portion control!

Peanut Butter & Chocolate Chip Blondies - Gluten-Free and Keto

Adapted from Paola at gnom-gnom.com

Makes One 9 x 9-inch pan

5 from 2 votes

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Ingredients

  

• 1/2 cup grass-fed butter melted and cooled slightly
• 3/4 cup Lakanto monk-fruit sweetener with erythritol powdered
• 1/2 cup natural peanut butter smooth or chunky (make sure sugar is not an ingredient)
• 3 whole eggs room temperature
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1-1/3 cup almond flour blanched and extra-fine grind
• 1/2 teaspoon sea salt or to taste depending on if using salted or unsalted peanut butter
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 2/3 cup dark chocolate chips preferably sugar free; plus more for topping (optional)
• Flaked sea salt to garnish, optional but recommended

Instructions

 

• Position a rack at the lower third of the oven and preheat to 350*F. Line a 9 x 9-inch baking pan with parchment paper and set aside.
• Add butter, sweetener and peanut butter into a large bowl and whisk until thoroughly combined. It may be quite thick.
• Add one egg at a time, whisking well after each one util it's completely incorporated. The texture should be smooth (except for any peanut chunks), with the sweetener dissolved. Whisk in the vanilla extract.
• Add the almond flour, salt and baking powder, and whisk vigorously until fully blended. The mixture will be thick. Fold in the chocolate chips, transfer the batter into the prepared baking pan, and top off with extra chocolate chips and flacked sea salt. If you're using salted peanut butter, you will want to take care not to over salt.
• Bake for about 25 minutes until the center is just set. Begin checking doneness at about 20 minutes. Do not over bake, and remember there will be additional carry-over baking once removed from the oven.
• Cool completely on a wire rack before attempting to remove the blondies from the pan. When ready, lift blondies up and out of the pan using the edges of the parchment paper. Cut into desired size (or shapes!).
• Store in an airtight container for up to five days, or in the freezer for up to one month.