Want some low carb Halloween cookies that won’t cause a sugar coma? These sweet little vanilla sugar cookies are soft and tender with a sweet cream cheese frosting.
Those googly eyes are also sugar-free my friends, and I will tell you how to make your very own. It’s super fun and ridiculously easy.
BEST SWEETENERS FOR THIS RECIPE
I made the low carb sugar cookies with allulose, erythritol, and a 50/50 blend of erythritol and monk fruit.
- Allulose: These were the best. The allulose had no aftertaste at all; the cookies stayed soft when cold, did not harden or grain up and had the best texture. This is the best sweetener if you plan on keeping the cookies around longer than a day.
- Erythritol: Had a great texture, a tiny bit of cooling sensation, and the cookies did harden as they sat out on the countertop. My husband said he preferred the texture of the cookies made with erythritol and liked that bite that it created. I did not.
- Erythritol Monk Fruit Blend: Had a great texture, the cooling sensation was reduced greatly, and the cookies took longer to grain and firm up. I found these cookies were good a day afterward.
- Liquid sweeteners will not work as well in the cookies. They reduce the bulk of the dry ingredients and throw off the ratio of dry and wet ingredients.
- If you can’t get allulose, a blend of sweeteners really does work best. You can replace Allulose in this recipe at 1:1 for either 100% erythritol or a 50-50 blend of erythritol & monk fruit.
- For the frosting, use your favorite sweetener. I used powdered allulose, but monk fruit or erythritol would work fine. Liquid sugar replacements would also work fine in the frosting.
Answers about Sweeteners, Low Carb Baking Tips, and General FAQ
For more detailed information about must-have baking tools and answers about sugar replacements, you can check out these FAQ pages.
We also have a handy sweetener replacement chart you can download for free!
Our FAQ Pages have answers to your biggest low carb baking questions including:
Tips for Baking With Almond Flour
Tips for Baking with Coconut Flour
Guides for Allulose, Monk Fruit, and Erythritol.
Substitutes for Xanthan Gum.
SUGAR-FREE GOOGLY EYES PLUS OPTIONS
I made my own sugar-free royal icing and actually made my own googly eyes. If you want to go that far, I have instructions for you on the recipe card. The great thing about making your own royal icing is you can also make some colourful sugar-free sprinkles.
But… if you do not want to get into making googly eyes from scratch I have a few options for you.
OPTION 1
Use melted chocolate. You can now buy Lilly’s white chocolate (I know, right? That stuff is amazing). You could melt a tiny bit of white chocolate and use some melted dark chocolate to make the pupil – easy peasy.
OPTION 2.
Use the buttercream frosting and dye a few blobs with black food dye. Use the buttercream to pipe on eyeballs.
OPTION 3.
Use regular edible googly eyes. In a teaspoon of googly eyes, there are 4 net carbs. A teaspoon has around 6 small eyes. So for 1 set of candy eyeballs, you will be adding 1.3 net carbs per brownie. That’s not outrageous.
making the sugar cookies
- Use a heavy-duty cookie sheet. If you do not have a heavy-duty cookie sheet, doubling the pan with another cookie sheet will do the trick. No second pan? Use a layer of tin foil to protect the bottom of your sheet. Almond flour and coconut flour over-brown quickly. Protecting the cookie sheet’s bottom ensures an even golden brown bake.
- Keep an eye out on the cookies around the 12-14 minute mark. We want the sugar cookies to be just starting to brown a bit around the edges.
- Let the cookies cool on the pan for 10 minutes before removing them. They will be soft (just like a regular cookie) when first out of the oven, and we need to give them time to set.
Frosting
Here are some tips to make sure your whipped cream frosting comes out perfect every time.
- In a stand mixer, or with a hand mixer, whip cold cream cheese until it becomes spreadable.
- Scrape down the sides of the bowl, to make sure all cream cheese bits are well blended.
- Add the heavy cream, vanilla, and sweetener to the bowl and mix on low until whip cream starts to blend with cream cheese.
- Turn the mixer up and whip the mixture until soft and fluffy.
Piping Tips
Fit a piping bag with Wilton’s Grass Tip 233 and fill 1/2 full with low carb frosting. Hold the decorating bag at a 90-degree angle to the top of the cookie.
Squeeze bag to form fur. Pull up and away when the icing strand is long enough (about 1 inch) stop pressure and pull the tip away from the cookie.
Storage & serving Suggestions
So these cookies are best eaten in the first few days and store best in the fridge. You can store the cookies, unfrosted for up to 5 days in the fridge, so long as they are well sealed in an airtight container.
You can freeze the unfrosted cookies in the freezer for up to a month.
Low Carb Halloween Cookies with Monster Faces
Adorable Monster cookies complete with fur and googly eyes but made entirely without added refined sugar or gluten! A really cute Halloween cookie for anyone watching their carbs or sugar intake.
Ingredients
Monster Cookie Batter
- 2 ounces cream cheese
- 1/2 cup unsalted butter
- 3/4 cup powdered erythritol
- 1 large egg
- 2 tsp vanilla
- 1 1/3 cup almond flour
- 1/3 cup coconut flour
- 2 Tbsp protein powder
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1/4 tsp salt
Frosting
- 1/2 cup whipping cream
- 1/3 cup powdered sweetener
- 1 cup (8 ounces) full-fat cream cheese
- 1 tsp vanilla
- Orange & Purple Food colouring
Googly Eyes
- 2 Tbsp powdered egg white
- 2 cups powdered erythritol
- 1 Tbsp lemon juice
- 2 Tbsp water (plus more for blending)
- Food Dyes
- 1 tsp Vanilla
Instructions
Sugar Cookies
- Cream butter and cream cheese in a medium-sized bowl until the mixture is soft and spreadable.
- Add sweetener, vanilla, and egg to the butter and cream cheese mixture and mix on high until well blended.
- Add almond flour, coconut flour, baking powder, protein powder, and salt to the wet ingredients and blend on low until ingredients are well incorporated.
- Wrap cookie dough in plastic wrap and place in the fridge for 30 minutes to cool.
- Preheat oven to 325F and line a heavy-duty cookie sheet with parchment. * see notes below about cookie sheet.
- Once the cookie dough is cooled, drop 1/4 cup round balls of dough onto your prepared cookie sheet, and press down with your fingers. The dough does not spread a lot, so the shape you create is the shape you will end up with, so try to flatten the dough evenly.
- Bake in a 325F oven for 14-16 minutes until the cookies' outside edges just start to brown. Do not over bake.
Low Carb Frosting
- Cube one cup of cold full-fat cream cheese and add it to the bowl of a stand mixer and blend for 1 minute until the cream cheese has no lumps. Scrape down the sides of the bowl if necessary.
- Add vanilla, food colouring, and powdered erythritol.
- Add 1/2 cup of full-fat whipping cream to the bowl and mix on low for 30 seconds, until blended with cream cheese. Turn up to medium and then high until the whipped cream and cream cheese fluff up and resemble buttercream frosting.
- Do not overbeat. Over beating will cause the mixture to liquefy.
- Fit a piping bag with Wilton's Grass Tip 233 and fill 1/2 full with low carb frosting icing. Hold the decorating bag at a 90-degree angle from the top of the cookie.
- Squeeze bag to form fur. Pull up and away when the icing strand is long enough (about 1 inch) stop pressure and pull the tip away from the cookie.
Googly Eyes (Optional, see options in the blog post)
- In a large bowl of a stand mixer, whisk together the powdered egg white and powdered erythritol, then slowly mix in the water, lemon juice, and vanilla while the mixer is running on medium-low speed. Increase speed to medium and beat until stiff peaks form, around 7-10 minutes.
- Divide the thick white icing into individual bowls for however many colours you want and add gel food coloring, a few drops at a time, mixing well until you achieve the shades you like.
- To thin each color for piping consistency, add 1 teaspoon of water at a time and stir well, continuing to add water by 1/2 teaspoon increments until your mixture can be easily piped, but still holds its shape without spreading.
- Once your icing is the right colour and consistency, scoop it into a piping bag fitted with a size 2 or 3 tips. Pipe dots onto parchment paper. Let the dots dry for 30 minutes and add your black royal icing to a piping bag fitted with a size 1 or size 2 tip—pipe on small black dots onto the white to create googly eyes.
- Dry your icing for at least 4 hours; if the humidity is high, you may need to let them dry a bit longer.
Notes
1. If you do not have a heavy-duty commercial cookie sheet my recommendation is to either double up your pans by sliding an extra pan under the one you are using, or wrap the bottom of your cookie sheet with tin foil. Almond flour and coconut flour tend to over-brown and we need to protect the bottom of the cookies while they bake.
2. Do not skip the protein powder. The protein powder replaces gluten and helps the cookie to stabilize and give it structure. Without the protein powder, the cookies will fall apart. You can use any flavor of protein powder you want.
3. Do not skip cooling your dough in the refrigerator, if you skip this step the cookies will not hold their shape and will spread and flatten when baked.
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Nutrition Information:
Yield: 16 Serving Size: 1Amount Per Serving: Calories: 197Total Fat: 16gSaturated Fat: 7gTrans Fat: 0gUnsaturated Fat: 8gCholesterol: 41mgSodium: 122mgCarbohydrates: 8gNet Carbohydrates: 5gFiber: 3gSugar: 3gProtein: 5g
Nutritional information for the recipe is provided as a courtesy and is approximate only. We cannot guarantee the accuracy of the nutritional information given for any recipe on this site. Erythritol carbs (and sugar alcohols) are not included in carb counts as it has been shown not to impact blood sugar. Net carbs are the total carbs minus fibre.
I made these cookie today and they turned out SO CUTE! (I wish I had the option to upload a photo.) I substituted sunflower seed flour for the almond flour due to health reasons and they turned out great. Thank you for this fun recipe.
Hi Kathy, your comment made my day, thank you so much for leaving your feedback, it is greatly appreciated! I would so love to see your cookies!
Hi there? When you recommend using protein powder in your recipes do you use the kind that would create a shake, or would a collagen protein powder that you add to beverages work?
Hi Taylor, we use protein power, not collagen. I’ve tested with collagen protein and although it does not impart a flavor, it doesn’t seem to help as much with binding and tends to change the texture. Cheers!