#QuarantineCooking is the new trend, isn't it? I wanted to make a pastry that felt fresh as the lovely spring weekend we just had--to help combat this dreary, grey, and windy week we are in for. This is a low carb and keto-friendly recipe.
INGREDIENTS:
2 1/4 c almond flour
1 tsp b. soda
1/2 tsp salt (I use Himalayan pink salt)
2 eggs
1/4 c coconut oil, melted
1/4 c sugar sweetener if you're calorie conscious (otherwise, honey can work)
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup fresh strawberries, hulled and roughly chopped
1/4 c fresh basil, finely chopped
Glaze:
1/2 c Powdered erythritol
cold water (really just estimate this)
Basil sugar:
less than a quarter cup of chopped basil leaves
estimated amount of Monkfruit + erythritol blend sweetener (think caster sugar texture)
DIRECTIONS:
Preheat your oven to 350F. If you're using paper lines, go ahead and line your muffin tin. I like to use a silicon muffin tray because it's easier to deal with.
In a bowl, sift and whisk together almond flour, baking soda, and salt. In another, larger bowl, beat the eggs, then add in vanilla, coconut oil, and sweetener until you get a homogenous mixture. Then add the dry into your wet ingredients gradually so that they combine well. Lastly, add in your strawberries and basil.
Fill your muffin or cupcake tin/tray and bake them for about 25 minutes. Use the toothpick method to make sure they are cooked through (at this point, they should have developed a nice brown colour).
While the cakes bake, get your glaze together. It's really as easy as making a paste out of the powdered sweetener and water. This is the same technique I used to glaze my Lemon Pound Cake, except that for the pound cake I used lemon juice instead of water.
To make the basil sugar, just toss your basil leaves in a food processor and pulse. Then add your sugar substitute and pulse again for a few seconds. Fluff it up with a fork to keep it from getting soggy.
Once the cakes are cooked through, take out the tray and cool it. After about 5 minutes, take the cakes out of the tray and cool them on a wire rack. This is an essential step because if you leave them in the tray, the fruit in the cakes will cook further and make your cakes soggy. Once they are room temperature, you can start glazing them and topping them with basil sugar. Feel free to garnish any way you like--either with strawberries or with small basil leaves (in hindsight, basil leaves with the strawberries would have been prettier as a topping! I should have done that haha).
Enjoy!