These Low Carb Thai Basil Lime and Coconut Cupcakes bring together some lovely sweet and savory ingredients for a unique dessert. These cupcakes are high in fat and are 4 net carbs per serving, making them perfect for the keto diet. They are also gluten free!
- 1 cup almond flour
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 1/4 tsp pink Himalayan salt
- 1/2 cup granular sweetener of choice (we used Swerve)
- 1 tsp vanilla extract or imitation vanilla
- 15 drops liquid SweetLeaf Stevia Coconut
- 4 whole eggs
- juice of 1 lime
- 1/4 cup coconut oil
- 1/4 cup unsweetened coconut chips
- 1 batch low carb cream cheese frosting (see notes)
- juice of 1.5 limes
- 1 oz Thai basil leaves
- liquid sweetener to taste, we used KetoseSweet+ Liquid
- coconut chips for garnish
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Preheat your oven to 350°F. Line your muffin tin with muffin liners, and then spray with non-stick spray. Melt your coconut oil and set aside to cool.
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Place all of your dry ingredients (almond flour, baking powder and salt) in a bowl and put thru a sifter to get rid of all the clumps. You can use a rubber spatula to press out the lumps and turn them smooth. Once everything is sifted, mix together well with a whisk or rubber spatula.
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In a small bowl, crack all of your eggs to ensure there are no egg shells. Set aside.
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Next, add your coconut oil, vanilla extract, liquid stevia, lime juice and sweetener. Mix well.
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Add your eggs one at a time to the batter and beat until smooth.
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Fold in the coconut chips. If you like, you can chop the coconut up into smaller pieces. We prefer the big flakes, but it’s up to you.
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Now pour your batter into your muffin tin and bake for 15 minutes. This recipe will make 9-12 cupcakes, depending on how much batter you use per muffin.
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The muffins should be a bit browned on top. Let cool on a cooling rack.
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Meanwhile, you will want to make your Thai Basil topping and frosting. Make our cream cheese frosting recipe, and set aside while creating the Thai basil topping.
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In a mortar and pestle or food processor, add in your Thai basil leaves and mash up. Squeeze in your lime juice and add sweetener to taste. Taste until you like the sweetness level.
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Now, once the cupcakes have cooled, just mix in some of the Thai basil mixture to the cream cheese frosting. Reserve the rest of the mixture for on top for a nice pop of green. Garnish with more basil leaves and coconut chips.
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Serve and enjoy!
This recipe was created as a part of an Instagram campaign in partnership with KitchenAid. We were not required to share the recipe on our blog, but we wanted to for you guys!
Here's the recipe for our low carb cream cheese frosting. It makes a great base for this frosting.
If you have vanilla extract to use, that works best. However, lately we’ve been noticing the prices of vanilla extract have been very high, so we have been using imitation vanilla instead! Either works and will give you a delicious vanilla flavor. They measure the same.
We just recently decided it was actually easier to start sifting our dry ingredients. For a while we were lazy and just dumped everything in the bowl. This will work fine, but in order to get out all the clumps, we think this step is super worth it.
We also think it’s best to crack your eggs into a separate bowl to be able to fish out any egg shells a little easier.
Sweeteners: We think the best tasting baked goods often have a blend of sweeteners. We link our favorite products so you can try for yourself, but as always, this is just our suggestion and you can feel free to use whatever sweeteners are your favorite! This goes for if you are not concerned about the sugar content as well. We think the granular sweeteners we use as sugar substitutes measure and taste just like sugar, so we imagine subbing 1:1 would work just fine. SweetLeaf Stevia is much sweeter than regular sugar, so use sparingly and taste as you go. We’d also like to mention that we like things on the less sweet side usually. Our sweetener measurements should be considered a starting point, so you can adjust as you go to fit your tastes.
Flour: We often get asked about substituting flours for people that aren’t keto or gluten free. We are definitely not experts. We have grown to like baking as it’s sort of a necessity for our special diet, but we kind of just experiment a lot until we find what works. We usually use almond flour and we find the texture to be closest to regular white flour in our experience, so we imagine subbing 1:1 regular flour would work okay. Again, we aren’t guaranteeing anything!
For the topping: For this part of the recipe, I really think the sweetness level varies so much just depending on the sweetener you have on hand, so I didn’t want to give an exact measurement. We think liquid sweetener works the best for this recipe.
Macros: Makes 12 servings, 280 calories per serving, 25 grams of fat, 4 net carbs (1 gram fiber), 6 grams of protein. We provide approximate nutrition facts as a courtesy using MyFitnessPal. Please always track your own macros.