Low-Carb Banoffee Pie (Egg-Free)

Now, wait a minute! Low-carb banoffee? Let me ask again, low-carb and banoffee, all in the same pie? And the whole pie, from topping to crust with just mere 5 ingredients? And net carbs less than 5 per slice? Egg-free as well? I must be kidding! Well, guess again. Here it is, with all its lusciousness, easy and simple, without sacrificing anything except carbs. Enjoy!

Low-Carb Banoffee Pie (Egg-Free)

6 tablespoons = 85 g organic butter (salted for fuller flavor)
1 cup = 240 ml = 150 g organic almond flour (from Ölmühle Solling)
2 cups + 2 tablespoons = 5 dl organic heavy cream
1 cup = 240 ml = 140 g brown sugar substitute
1 tablespoon banana flavor

 

1. Melt the butter over low heat.
2. Preheat the oven to 300 °F (150 °C).
3. Mix the almond flour with 1/3 cup (= 80 ml) of the brown sugar substitute in a small bowl.
4. Mix the melted butter with the almond flour and sugar substitute mixture.
5. Press the dough firmly into a pan or a 11 X 7 inch (27 X 18 cm) glass baking dish.
6. Put 3/4 cup + 2 tablespoons (= 2 dl = 7 oz.) of the heavy cream to a saucepan. Add rest (2/3 cup = 160 ml) of the brown sugar substitute and stir well.
7. Boil the cream and the sugar substitute in a medium heat stirring constantly until the mixture is like a quite thick sauce. This takes some 10 minutes. The toffee shouldn’t be too thick, since it will solidify to some extent while cooling.
   
8. Remove the pan from the heat, add banana flavor and let cool.
9. Bake the crust for about 20 minutes until golden brown. Let cool preferably in the fridge.
10. When the toffee and the crust have cooled down, whip the remaining cream until it’s firm but still a bit soft.
11. Spread the toffee on the crust and top with the whipped cream.
12. Decorate if you like, and serve. If something left, store in the fridge.
    

 

Approximate Nutrition Information	Whole pie	Per serving if 8 servings in total	Per serving if 10 servings in total
Protein	65.6 g	8.2 g	6.6 g
Fat	275.0 g	34.4 g	27.5 g
Net carbs	15.0 g	1.9 g	1.5 g
kcal	3091 kcal	387 kcal	309 kcal

 

Often banoffee pie recipes contain condensed milk which is sweet and high in carbs. I’ve replaced the condensed milk with heavy cream here. Even unsweetened varieties of condensed milk (or actually I’ve seen evaporated milk) exist, they have some three times more carbs than heavy cream.

The almond flour I use here is from Ölmühle Solling and it’s fat reduced. It has 12% fat content while normal fat almond flour has some 50% fat content. I’ve found it from the local health food store. The texture is really fine, and the flour is heavier than other, non-organic brands I’ve used before. If I take 1 cup of normal fat almond flour, it weighs some 4 oz. (≈ 115 g), but if I take 1 cup of fat reduced almond flour, it weighs app. 5.3 oz. (≈ 150 g). In case you don’t have this fat reduced almond flour at hand, you can naturally use other brands. You might want to try 1½ cup (≈ 3.5 dl) of normal fat almond flour instead of 1 cup (≈ 2.4 dl) of fat reduced almond flour.

In case you consider banana flavor too artificial you can simply omit it — the taste is still great but it’s just not banoffee pie anymore. Or how about replacing the banana flavor with your favorite flavor? Orange, pineapple, cherry, …?

A word of caution: Even the taste is pleasant, the brown sugar substitute I’ve used here contains maltitol, which isn’t my favorite sweetener because it might cause rise in blood sugar levels, or cause an upset stomach. However, I’ve used it here, since I’ve experienced that it makes the best tasting and looking sugar-free toffee. There used to be another brown sugar substitute on the market called DiabetiSweet Brown Sugar Substitute which made quite nice toffee as well, but to my understanding it’s discontinued by manufacturer. Anyway, it contained artificial sweeteners, flavors and colors, like Acesulfame-K, Red No. 40 or Yellow No. 5 so it wasn’t my most preferred sweetener either.

If you cannot tolerate maltitol, you can try for example erythritol or Just Like Sugar Brown for the toffee, but according to my experiments erythritol doesn’t give brown color, and with Just Like Sugar Brown there is quite strange aftertaste. Also with erythritol the toffee doesn’t thicken that well, so you might want to add a couple of teaspoons guar gum or a pinch of xanthan for thickening, although I ended up with a custard-like substance rather than gooey toffee when I tried that out. Actually the brown sugar substitute I’ve used in the recipe has some corn starch (which isn’t really my favorite stuff since I avoid corn as well), which also helps achieve thicker toffee.

The taste is real sweet with erythritol and you really can feel the typical “cooling effect”, so it’s better to start with small amount and add more if needed. Erythritol also tends to crystallize while cooling. I wonder if there are other sweeteners worth trying. If you have an idea how to make healthy, sugar-free low-carb toffee, please leave a comment!