Grain Free Pecan Tassies (Paleo, Keto Friendly)

Grain Free Pecan Tassies are just as good as my original pecan tassies made here. Pecan Tassies were the first recipe I ever blogged and it has a very sentimental meaning for me.

These are my favorite Christmas cookie. This is the sugar free, low carb version, but it’s just as awesome. It’s also gluten free. I can hardly stop eating them. And, just in case you didn’t know this, I now own a thriving cottage home keto bakery.

When I was a teenager, my brother and I lived only with my father. One Saturday night during the holidays  a neighbor came over and showed us how to make Christmas cookies. No one baked in my family. No one ever made us cookies and without a mother at the time, life was harder, more lonely.

A Precious Food Memory

We both felt low with abandonment and it seemed like such a treasure to have a woman come to our house to make cookies with us. I can picture my brother taking a spoon and filling each cookie with a brown sugar, pecan mixture.

I remember feeling grateful that she took the time to write down the recipe and give it to me. Isn’t it astounding that it’s the small kindnesses that can fill a heart for a lifetime.

She wrote out the recipe for pecan tassies on a little index card and I still have it. I’m not that person who saves a lot of things, but this held a very deep memory that was happy at a time those were rare. We baked until late into the night, and since both she and my brother are deceased, I feel a need to carry this tradition on.

Grain Free Pecan Tassies are low carb, sugar free made with  a Homemade Brown Sugar

Macros: Each Pecan Tassie is 117 calories, 2.5 g carbs, 2 g fiber (.5 carbs)  3 g protein, 11 g fat.

Homemade Brown Sugar

I recently discovered that it’s pretty easy to make a healthy, low carb brown sugar using blackstrap molasses. There are 14 carbs per tablespoon of Swerve granulated, making this only an additional 7 carbs per 12 cookies. It tastes just like brown sugar and helps. You can also use the Swerve brown sugar.

The original pecan tassies recipe tastes more like a mini pecan pie but with more of a pastry feel, as the dough is made with cream cheese. This grain free pecan tassie is more like a pecan bun or cake. It’s delicious and it freezes perfectly.

I made several test batches of Grain Free Pecan Tassies using the almond flour and we agreed that adding in a little bit of orange extract into the dough and adding cinnamon pushed the flavors more towards that orange cinnamon roll we love on Christmas morning. It’s so delicious.

The Dough Process

I used almond flour, egg, melted butter, a little swerve and some orange zest for the dough. I weighed the dough and divided it by 24. Each dough ball weighs about 12 grams. It then gets tamped down to make a pastry cup.

I’ve found through experience that these can sometimes stick so I cut little round parchment papers to place on the bottom of each cup. If you just made one circle on a parchment sheet and fold over several times and cut, you will quickly have small rounds. It really does help. I also spray the pan.

Sugar Free Brown Sugar

If you don’t have Swerve Brown sugar you can add black strap molasses (about 2 teaspoons) to filling.

The filling is easy to make. I use my homemade brown sugar, melted butter, chopped pecans and cinnamon. The filling is then spooned into the cups and topped with more chopped pecans. They only take about 15 minutes to bake to a golden brown.

Read more about why I love Swerve here. 

Play around with this recipe for Keto Friendly Pecan Tassies

You can play around by adding chocolate chips or unsweetened coconut.

The fantastic news is that these freeze so well. Just take out and defrost for 30 seconds for a quick treat, or go ahead and make all the cookies you want in advance so the holidays are easy.

More Low Carb Christmas Cookies from Spinach Tiger

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