Keto Peanut Butter Cookies!
I’m surprised it took this long to post low carb peanut butter cookies, I guess because they’re gone so quickly once they’ve baked!
Peanut butter cookies hold a special place in my heart because they’re the first dessert recipe I ever made at the young age of 10. And it figures, there are only three ingredients needed for them! Traditionally, they are sugar, peanut butter and an egg. Simple enough for kids and delicious enough to enjoy at any age.
Luckily, it is easy to create a low carb version of peanut butter cookies and still keep the recipe extremely simple. To make these low carb and keto-friendly, the only thing needed is to swap out sugar for erythritol! Even my 10-year-old baking self could still make them!
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The brand of erythritol we use is Swerve or Sukrin. They’re found in a lot of grocery stores near us and fit our budget when we need to stock up on low carb sweeteners! Swerves erythritol is ground much finer than most erythritols which makes baking a lot simpler because erythritol is a bit more difficult to dissolve in water than regular table sugar. The finer grind of the sweetener makes it blend into the keto peanut butter cookie batter well. You can also get a confectioners’ version of erythritol which helps in baking even more- especially for frosting!
After you make the cookie dough for these keto peanut butter cookies, you can scoop the dough into balls and then roll them in some extra granulated erythritol. This will add a little sweetness and it is also a classic touch that is added to many peanut butter cookies. That sparkly sweetener on the outside is hard to resist!
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The original recipe that’s been posted countless times all over the internet calls for a cup of sugar for about 12-15 cookies. Based on my experience, I decided to add in half a cup of erythritol. Being keto-adapted, my tolerance for sweets has decreased drastically. And experimenting with keto desserts has taught me to cut the sweetness! Even though erythritol is only about 70% as sweet as sugar, I still used a small amount and the low carb peanut butter cookies still turned out sweet and perfect! You won’t even notice that the sugar content has been reduced!
I suggest starting off with this small amount of sweetener and doing a taste-test. I figured since peanut butter is a treat to me to begin with, adding a whole ton of sweetener wouldn’t really be necessary. Let that natural sweetness of the peanut butter shine through!
Here are our keto-fied low carb peanut butter cookies!
| Servings: cookies |
- 1 cup peanut butter (no sugar added)
- 1/2 cup So Nourished erythritol sweetener
- 1 large egg
- Preheat your oven to 350°F and gather your ingredients! Place half a cup of granular erythritol into a Nutribullet and blend for a few seconds. You should end up with a fine, powdered sweetener!
- Combine the peanut butter, powdered erythritol and the egg and mix very well.
- Roll the cookie dough into 1-inch balls and place on a parchment paper lined baking sheet. Press down with a fork twice to create the iconic peanut butter cookie pattern.
- Bake in the oven for about 10-15 minutes or until you see the cookie edges turn a darker brown.
- Let them cool on a wire rack and enjoy with a yummy glass of nut milk!
Loved this recipe? Let us know! Something didn’t quite turn out right? Ask us in the comments below or contact us– we respond to comments every day and would love to hear from you and help you out! And check out all our low carb desserts to learn to make more delicious and healthy meals! Enjoy the cookies!
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The content on this website should not be taken as medical advice and you should ALWAYS consult with your doctor before starting any diet or exercise program. We provide nutritional data for our recipes as a courtesy to our readers. We use Total Keto Diet app software to calculate the nutrition and we remove fiber and sugar alcohols, like erythritol, from the total carbohydrate count to get to the net carb count, as they do not affect your blood glucose levels. You should independently calculate nutritional information on your own and not rely on our data. The website or content herein is not intended to cure, prevent, diagnose or treat any disease. This website shall not be liable for adverse reactions or any other outcome resulting from the use of recipes or recommendations on the Website or actions you take as a result. Any action you take is strictly at your own risk.
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When I made these they were extremely dry. Any advice? I used Smuckers all natural creamy peanut butter. The dough was delicious by itself, but I couldn’t eat them once cooked as they were so dry.
I’m not sure what could have happened. Different brands, I guess! Next time, maybe add some butter, or try baking for a few minutes less; your oven could be much stronger.
I’m wondering how you are doing the carb count for this recipe. According the the Erythritol package, there are 4 net carbs per teaspoon. The recipe calls for half a cup = 24 teaspoons. That is 96 carbs. Peanut butter is around 2 net carbs per tablespoon. 16 TBSP per cup – 32. Total carbs = 128 net carbs. Divide by 15 cookies gives you 8.5 per cookie. That is not low carb (relatively speaking/keto diet). Could you please clarify how you get 2 net carbs per cookie. Thanks!
Erythritol is a sugar alcohol, it’s categorized as a carb in the United States, but because it is not digested by the human body, it’s often left out of the net carb count (much like fiber!)
Hi, can I use Lakanto 1:1 for Erythritol? Thanks!
No, I wouldn’t. Lakanto is a monk fruit sweetener, which is about 100-200 times sweeter than sugar, while erythritol is only 70% as sweet as sugar. You’d need to use much less monk fruit to sweeten your desserts than erythritol. Hope that helps!
Can u use liquid stevia? I dont have granulated
You can, but the cookies may come out much smaller/fewer. Erythritol gives this recipe bulk.
I’m wondering why the peanut butter pictured is one that contains sugar and palm oil? Any thoughts?
This is one of the peanut butters we used to use. We’ve moved on to a Trader Joe’s peanut butter that has just 1 ingredient 🙂
Oh, this looks right up my alley! I found some 100% peanut butter (so no oils, sugar or yucky extras) in my local store recently, so that will be perfect for these. I’m gonna be using Stevia, and am totally fine with the reduced number of cookies. Love the fact they are chewy rather than crunchy!
Can’t wait to make these!
Enjoy them, Scout! 🙂
i used smuckers natural with 1 g sugars and only 1 ingredient, peanuts…the skippy has 3 g. sugar, and added sugar and palm oil…the smuckers also tastes much better to me.
Can you substitute stevia for erythritrol
I think that would be ok! Just know that you may end up with fewer cookies since stevia is so much sweeter than erythritol, you’ll need much less to get the same sweetness. Losing that bulk from the erythritol will make fewer cookies. They’ll still taste great though 🙂
Can you substitute pbfit for regular peanut butter
Nope, pbfit is a low-fat version of peanut butter and won’t work for this recipe. If you really wanted to, you could, but you’d have to add some fat back in. Use real peanut butter for the best flavor and results. Besides, high fat is the way to go!
I used PBFit mixed in with some coconut oil until it had a loose peanut butter consistency. The coconut was unrefined and gave it the smallest coconut flavor, slightly sweet, so I used a bit less sweetener. The cookies were fine, a bit crumbly, considering they have no flour and I got in my MCTs, I can’t complain. I added a touch of vanilla also. I liked this recipe a lot, and it was so easy to whip up a batch quickly, didn’t even need a mixer. Thank you for posting!
Make sure to let the cookies cool all the way down next time! Glad you enjoyed them, Julie 🙂
These look amazing. Have you tried making them with almond butter instead? I think that’s all I have.
Hi Sara, someone told us they tried it with almond butter and it worked great for them 🙂
I used nut and seed butter from Costco and it was great.
Looks Amazing!! Did anyone try it with other nut butters? We have a peanut allergy.
Nice little recipe, I have these a lot. I have found that if you combine the peanut butter and the erythritol (with a 1/4 tsp of stevia) BEFORE adding the egg(s), you do not need to grind the erythritol to a powder first (it dissolves into the peanut butter). I also find that a pinch of salt (vitriol) and 1/4 tsp of powdered/liquid stevia helps boost the sweetness a tad, so much so that you can even use a little less sweetener (1/3 cup to 1/3 cup + Tbsp of erythritol). The stevia also helps get rid of most of that cooling effect that erythritol tends to have.
I gave this recipe to my brother (he’s diabetic because of Lipitor) along with another recipe (good fat fudge), and he came up with the brilliant idea of combining the two whilst also making it faster to whip up. Basically, because the type of peanut butter we use does not have sugar or hydrogenated oil in it, it likes to separate. Therefore you have to stir it first (which is a real PITA). So, just use the whole jar and double batch it (it’s nearly two cups). Problem then is all those individual cookies (30 of them) that you have to make. So, he put the dough into a 9×13 pan, and made bars into them instead. Myself, I roll it out on a sil-pat to a slightly larger size, put that on the backside of a large pan and bake it for an extra five minutes or so.
Although this is pretty slick, the genius part was combining it with the aforementioned “good fat fudge” recipe by making that as a kind of topping/frosting http://www.carbwarscookbooks.com/good-fat-fudge/ The only down side is that you have to refrigerate it then (the fat fudge gets a bit too soft otherwise), but hey I live in MN and it’s cold here 8~9 months out of the year anyways, so they sit on top of my freezer in the garage anyways. The other down side is that it makes these so darned delicious, it’s hard to only have just one or two.
PS I use unflavored whey protein powder in that fudge recipe instead of the expensive collagen powder, and it seems to work just as well.
John, that sounds heavenly! Thank you for the tips. Do you cook/bake? You seem to have a great grasp on it 🙂
I’m whipping up a batch right now… I do like to cook/bake, mostly because I like good food (read: I’m a glutton), and because my wife doesn’t fare too well in the kitchen. I have baked since a young age, particularly cakes and cookies, since my parents were too busy to do that sort of thing (farmers). I come from a technical education background, so it is not surprising that I like to cook, as the soul of cooking and baking is technique. I’ve had to “relearn” how to cook/bake over the last year since going LCHF. I’m 70 pounds lighter, but still eating like a glutton. 8^].
Someone mentioned using an extra egg in this recipe, which I kind of tried tonight. Has anyone else tried that? I would advise against it if you are rolling it out like I do, as it seemed to get extra sticky/wet/greasy and the dough wanted to fall apart way more easily, and it also wanted to stick to my silicone roller. I ended up using a knife to “trowel” it smooth. Also, it didn’t seem to rise at all. Ended up with a much harder cookie texture. Being that I do a double batch, I only added one extra egg instead of two (3 total), just to see how it changed the recipe (glad I only did one extra). I think there is a fairly strict ratio of 1 (large) egg to 1 cup of peanut butter for this recipe, unless she did something very different than I did in mixing it together (I did it with a spoon by hand), or something was wrong with my jar of peanut butter (too much/little fat to protein ratio). I only use about 3/4 cup of erythritol (+1/2 tsp of powered stevia) for a double batch, as that seems sweet enough for me (tastes my vary). Now I’m wonder if powdering the erythritol would make much of a difference in texture?
BTW, for the fudge recipe, I usually measure out 1/4 cup of erythritol “granules” and then grind it into a powder, as I’m using extra super dark dutch cocoa powder (the stuff is nearly pitch black).
I just made these peanut butter cookies. They are amazing! I think the best peanut butter cookie I have ever eaten!! Thank you for the recipe. Hard to believe they are low carb.
They’re amazing, aren’t they? We’re glad you liked them 😀
I used xylitol and the batter was weirdly sticky, making it impossible to make nice little rounded pretty cookies. But, if I let the batter sit for a little bit it became possible to make the batter round out a bit. Idk why, but it worked lol.
Thanks for the tip, Gabrielle 🙂 maybe it dried it out a bit?
Mine did the same xylitol but I put the batter in the freezer for 5 min and then they were perfect to roll up 🙂
How did the Xylitol cookies taste? I only have Xylitol.
They tasted great, the whole family approved! I am going to try to add some vanilla extract next time though. I think it may enchance the flavors 🙂
A little vanilla never hurts! Glad you enjoyed the cookies, Sara 🙂
Looks tasty! Are they crunchy or chewy?
They’re on the chewier side 🙂
I used the trivia we don’t have swerve at any of our grocery stores is that also as good as the swerve
Just make sure the Truvia is a blend of stevia and erythritol only. Some blends have maltodextrin, which is not low carb or keto friendly.
I have found using 2 eggs instead of 1 makes much more moist and no problem with falling apart. When doing this I take em off the pan still warm since that’s the way I like to eat em. Wonderful !
Good tip! We’ll add an extra egg next time we make them and see how it turns out.