Keto Friendly Lemon Bars

By Michelle Sala, Integrative Health Coach

Lemons aren’t just for lemonade

Lemony desserts have to be my favorite go to for summer, but since I’ve gone low carb and no longer eat any ‘regular’ sugar desserts. I thought I’d never enjoy lemon bars again! Waaaah! Well, I went on a search for grain-free keto lemon bars. There were lots of recipes but many of them had almond flour in the filling which I thought was weird. I was looking for that traditional curd/custard filling. I finally found a recipe that looked decent, but by the time I did all my tweaking, I had completely recreated the recipe. The original recipe used a ridiculous amount of sugar substitute and I made the crust thicker like a shortbread cookie. I’m really pleased with the results! Get my lemon bar recipe here.

Ditch the carbs

The key to making dessert recipes low-carb is to replace traditional wheat flour with grain-free flours like almond flour and coconut flour. Gluten-free baking is tricky because you can’t do a 1:1 substitute with wheat flour and almond flour. Your recipe will not be successful if you do that.

The same goes for many low-carb sweeteners with the exception of a few. My favorite low-carb sweetener is Lakanto which is erythritol and monkfruit extract. It measure 1:1 with regular sugar which makes it easy to replace the evil sugar with your favorite recipes. Lakanto has 4g of carbs per teaspoon. Another sweetener that many low-carbers like to bake with is Swerve which is straight erythritol.

I buy the Lakanto Classic at Costco and the powdered Lakanto at Sprouts or online at Amazon. I also buy the almond flour that I use in this lemon bar recipe at Costco.

Quarantine baking

Back in March I wrote a blog on Quarantine Baking since so many were getting back in their kitchens cooking and baking REAL food! Woohoo! I hope you enjoy this lemon bar recipe and that it becomes a family favorite!