Keto Christmas cookies – Let the German Zimtsterne open the season with a Greek twist
Keto Christmas cookies, cakes and all sorts of delicacies… Everything will be KETONISED on yet another Christmas table of Ketonians. If you are with us for more than 2 years, then you know that each year we have a 100% Keto Christmas table without even worrying about cheating.
This is because you can’t cheat on the types of food we prepare, but you can overeat. To avoid that, we always make sure all our dishes, desserts and starters have nutrient density. This is how you make sure you take the gourmet portions and yet feel the wonderful festive effect of winter holidays.
Keto Christmas baking season
We better start early enough. We need to make sure only the best ones will be chosen to shine on our festive table. It’s not just the Christmas day, throughout December, all people in the western civilisation start celebrating. But this tradition goes back to ancient times. In fact, it’s all connected with the winter solstice and you don’t actually have to be religious to feel the end of the year festivity spirit!
It all started with Winter solstice celebrations
Keto Christmas cookies could be the healthiest evolution of the winter cookie tradition in Europe. You know that all traditional versions, especially German ones, contain so much sugar that you could just explode from it. However, why do we make cookies for the winter celebration? People all around Europe, long before the actual Christmas, celebrated the winter solstice with a form of cookie or cake.
They would bake them from the best ingredients they could have to invite the Sun back on Earth. It was considered that the personification of his majesty the Sun (Helios in Greek) would just travel away during the winter.
The sun is life, we know that today
From the KMD point of view, we know how much sunlight and the warm days mean to us. It’s not just vitamin D, it’s a wonderful feeling that fills your body and soul once the sun touches your skin! So, to evoke that feeling, humans are baking different comfort foods and celebrating the day when the sun will gradually start coming back: The days will be longer and warmer, while the
Keto Christmas cookies – why are we starting with Zimtsterne?
“Zimtsterne” cookies are a legendary part of the Christmas and Advent offerings to visitors in Germany and other central European countries. The meaning of the word Zimstern could be translated as the cinnamon star. In fact, cinnamon and almonds taste great together as we know from many of our Keto Christmas cookies called Melomakarona.
“Zimtsterne cookies” are sometimes used as Christmas ornaments and they look very decorative due to white icing. The legend says that cinnamon and almonds were highly valuable and rare ingredients in central Europe in the 1600s. They had to be imported from warmer zones, and they were considered as food for royalty. This demonstrates why almonds and cinnamon are particularly connected with once-a-year holidays such as Christmas!
The Ketonisation process
These cookies could be Keto if you just substitute the sugar with Stevia or monk fruit! Even the original recipe doesn’t contain wheat flour which is ideal for ketonisation. But, if you have trouble with oxalates, then maybe you’ll have to find an alternative for almonds. However, if you restrict yourself to a couple of cookies, you will be more than fine.
We will make sure that the nutrition density meets the three postulates of Keto Mediterranean diet! This is how we make a revolutionary twist with these Keto Christmas cookies! So, let’s just get festive, creative but stay loyal to the land of Ketonia!!!
Keto Christmas cookies – Keto Zimtsterne (Greek twist)
24
servings15
minutes15
minutes300
kcalIngredients
2 large eggs (organic, pasture raised)
2 yolks
2 tablespoons tallow (you can also use butter or ghee)
1 tablespoon Ceylon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon mahlep powder (or natural cherry aroma)
1 tsp ground vanilla bean (or 1 tbsp vanilla extract)
100g (3,5 oz) almond flour (or ground almonds, even better)
50g (1,75 oz) coconut flour
4 tsp powdered monk fruit or stevia blend sweetener
1/2 tsp sea salt
- Icing
2 egg whites
2 tbsp lemon juice
1/2 tsp sea salt
4 tsp powdered monk fruit or stevia blend sweetener
Directions
- Place the room-temperature tallow in the mixing bowl and add salt, sweetener, cinnamon, mahlep powder and vanilla. Start the mixer and let it unify the mixture.
- Add 2yolks and 2 whole eggs one by one. Keep mixing.
- Now add almond or ground nuts of your choice. Add coconut flour. Keep mixing until you get a thick cookie dough. Cover the bowl with a plastic foil and leave it in the refrigerator for 1 hour.
- In the meantime, beat the egg-whites (room temperature) with sea salt and lemon juice until you get a stiff peak. Add powdered sweetener and keep mixing at a high speed.
- Roll the dough between two parchment papers and cut out approximately 24 star-shaped cookies using a metallic cookie cutter. bake them for 15 minutes in the oven at 120ºC (250ºF).
- Using a small teaspoon, spread some of the meringue icing on top of each cookie. Return them to the oven but now have the temperature as low as 50ºC (120ºF) or the lowest your oven can go. Let the icing dry out but not get darker for 1 or even 2 hours.
Notes
- Depending on your cookie cutter, you might get more or less cookies.
- Original recipe calls for cherry brandy but we added a Greek twist to this idea. We are using Mahlep powder which smells and taste like cherries because it’s just a ground seed of a variety of cherry from the east! If you cannot find this, (widely available online) you can just use natural cherry flavouring)
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