Low Carb Girl Scout Savannah Smiles Cookies: If you’ve ever proclaimed to yourself that I must live the life of sexy abandon as a foodie writer, think again. Guess how many versions of this recipe went into the trash this week before I finally made a version I could tolerate, let alone share. No, really. Guess.
One? One! I wish! I wish. That’d be like winning the mental recipe lotto.
Two? We’re getting warmer. Warmer, but still more ingredients going into the trash.
Three? Three! How about no. Thankfully, no ovens caught fire. This time.
Four? Maybe? YES! Four! FOUR! Ah! Ah! Ah! (I’m turning into the Sesame Street Count over here.)
So this incredibly hard-fought for recipe is brought to you by the letter “F” for “F…inally done” and the number 4… Ah! Ah! Ah!
Enough with regaling you about the jealousies you no doubt feel knowing that dozens of dead, sad carcasses of cookies never meant to be went into the waste bin. Let’s talk lemon!
When life hands you lemon cookies by Girl Scouts, you spike the box between your legs and you Tebow it out. “Thank you, Jaysus for lemon cookies!” I love lemon. Love love love. It’s the tongue puckering, cheek smacking flavor of citrusy excitement that makes me want to break out into a possibly embarrassingly bad jig. That said, it’s probably all right.
While this recipe isn’t prexactly the crunchy Mexican Wedding Cake type goodness the Girl Scouts are known for, I was able to finally edit the most delicious cookie recipe ever from How Stuff Works Hungarian Lemon Poppy Seed Lemon Cookies. These cookies are A-May-Zing. You can cover them with powdered sweetener post-cooking, but they’re actually so wonderful, I wouldn’t bother. Leave these as they are. They’re perfect.
- Note: You can definitely leave these in ball form for baking. Whether flattened as a patty or not, they’re quite wonderful either way. If you want them to crunch, leave them on the counter for a few days, uncovered, in an arid room. They’ll crunch.
- Please also note you can and should powder your own sweetener instead of buying powdered, which tends to cost more and contain starch. Just use your bullet, blender, food processor or Ninja.
- Please finally note (darnit, I forgot what I was going to say). Oh yessss…. the disparity in carb count between whole carbohydrates and net in the nutritional information. It comes from the fact that sugar alcohols such as erythritol and xylitol pretty much cancel themselves out. So the carbs from the SA’s tend to negate. So if a cookie started at 20 carbs and had 20 sugar alcohol carbs, expect that I’m subtracting those. Hence the disparity. If you use a different sweetener, you might want to run your own numbers just to be safe. Sweeteners affect different people different ways. If you want to be safe, you can always add a carb per cookie for posterity.
- The powdered sweetener will give that wonderful cooling effect you’ve come to love from lemon coolers type cookies.
- I’m an Aquarius. (Too much?)
Low Carb Girl Scout Savannah Smiles Cookies
2/3 cup sugar equivalent substitute
1/2 cup butter at room temperature
1 egg
2 tsp lemon extract
3/4 cup almond flour
1/3 cup coconut flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1 Tbsp poppy seeds
Powdered sweetener, optional
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
2. In a large mixing bowl, cream together butter and sweetener until smooth.
3. Add in lemon extract and egg.
4. Add in baking soda and salt.
5. Add in flours and poppy seeds.
6. Roll dough into walnut-sized balls.
7. Place on a parchment paper lined cookie sheet and press gently to flatten the tops slightly.
8. Bake for 9-10 minutes, or just until the bottoms are golden.
9. Allow to cool on the cookie sheet for 5 minutes and then carefully transfer to cooling rack to fully dry/solidify, about 2 hours.
10. Optional: Dust with sweetener to finish.
Makes about 42 cookies.
Nutritional Information per low carb cookie fabulosuness: Calories: 39 Carbohydrates: 1.3 g, Fiber: .7 g, Net Carbohydrates: .6g, Protein: .8g, Fat: 3.5g
Nutritional Information for original Girl Scouts Savannah Smiles Cookie: Calories: 24 Carbohydrates: 4.3 g, Fiber: 0g, Net Carbohydrates: 4.3g, Protein: .2g, Fat: 1g
