I like to cook, therefore I like to listen to the Splendid Table. When I saw this Almond Florentine recipe on their website, I knew it would be keto-possible. Worked like a charm!
It is so easy, delicious and look at that fancy little cookie. Who could resist? It was a simple way to make an elegant holiday treat for Nora, and a batch with a little sugar for the rest of us!
A tip of you are making them for the whole family: reduce the sugar by at least half. I reduced the sugar a bit, and found them very very sweet. The orange still comes out, but I would like to taste the almond flavor too. The sugar is only for flavor, because Nora’s came out fine with no sugar at all.
One more tip: Kids like to zest oranges with a cheese grater or zester. Anders did the whole orange for me. Just make sure that they get the colored peel and avoid the white pith. Get them busy in the kitchen!
Nutrition information for 1 almond florentine cookie (recipe makes 10). Nutrition information provided by www.caloriecount.com
Almond & Orange Florentines
(makes 10 servings, 1.43:1 ratio)
30 g Egg whites
100 g Sliced almonds
2 g Orange zest
Preheat the oven to 300°F. Line a heavy baking sheet with a silicone mat or parchment paper brushed lightly with vegetable oil.
Measure and briefly beat the egg whites. Then gently mix them with the sliced almonds and orange zest. Measure 13 g portions of the mix to make little mounds on the lined pan, spaced a bit apart. Dip a fork in a small bowl of water and flatten each mound. Make them as thin as possible without big gaps between the almond slices.
Bake for about 12 minutes, until the cookies are golden brown. Cool completely before serving.
Nora’s cookies on left, rest of family’s on the right.
You can add a drizzle of high-quality dark chocolate for extra flavor. I use Green & Black’s 85% dark chocolate. Melt a square in a small silicone pinch bowl by putting it in the microwave for 30 seconds. Check and microwave again briefly if necessary to melt it.
Put one cookie on the gram scale and tare it. Drizzle the melted chocolate on to the cookie until you reach the desired amount. I used 1.5 grams of chocolate on Nora’s, which added 0.41 g carbs, 0.15 g protein, 0.75 g carbs (9 calories, 1.33:1 ratio).
The ratio is very low for her, so we make “hot chocolate” out of heavy cream and a pinch of cocoa powder, steamed with the espresso machine’s attachment. Lovely holiday treat.
Thank you for doing this recipe in Grams. Its one less step to convert. 🙂
Hi Christy,
I just came across your blog as I was doing a search for a ketogenic recipe for my son. Thank you so much for your work here! We started our son on the KD in September because he was a brain tumor that was not fully resectable and the research on KD and cancer was compelling enough for us to give this a go. In any case, I love what you’re doing here. We have a small nonprofit that supports anticancer nutrition for pediatric cancer families. We’ll certainly begin sending families to your blog!
Hi Justin–I’m so sorry to hear about your son’s tumor. It is never wise to compare horribles, especially when it comes to our kids–anything threatening is horrible and we feel for your worry and dedication to healing him. I have seen some of the research on keto and tumors too, and I would certainly do the same in your shoes.
We are honored to be of help to you and the families that you support. If there is anything else you need or that would make things easier, please let me know. Do you weigh food to the gram too? I can put equivalent common measurements in recipes or provide them for past recipes if that would help.
Best to you, your family and son.
Thank you so much for the kind response! We do not weigh food to the gram now but did for the first couple weeks to get a feel for what the proportions were. We and our other families don’t (generally) have to control seizures so the precision isn’t quite as crucial. Although one researcher suggests that an optimal therapeutic KD for cancer will bring the glucose to BHB ratio to 1:1 or less. So we just poke fingers every day or two and if the ratio gets too high, we pull back on carbs and protein and up the fat. It’s all in the numbers!
In any case, please keep doing what you’re doing! These recipes are great. We did the coconut oil/macadamia “cookie” recipe this weekend and loved it!
Oh, and to also reply to your generous response about lipid levels, I’m glad you mentioned the possibility of a transient rise in LDL. As I sift through the literature and the anecdotes on blogs, I’ve come to appreciate what a unique metabolic state ketosis is and that the body changes when it becomes “keto-adapted.” Which, btw, is why I can’t stand the 30-day LCHF studies. 30 days is when things start to level out.
Anyway, I’ve read in the epilepsy literature that things like metabolic acidosis often clears up on its own after 6 months to a year on the diet. Perhaps LDL will do this as well.
Keep up the great work!
Thanks for the follow-up Justin, good to know, especially as we start to think about weaning Nora from the hard-core 3.5:1 ratio in April, eventually going back to estimating instead of weighing. We’ve never poked fingers, just done the keto-strips (at-home urine analysis, which is very imprecise but indicative of her keto-state).
I wish metabolic acidosis cleared up, but I think at the highest ratios it is something we have to battle every day. You may have seen our posts about blood acid issues and now daily baking soda cocktails. We look forward to transitioning off that routine.
Again, we wish you the best. I have a few blog posts in my recipe log that I need to get out, but they are sitting in line behind some work tasks!