Delicious Keto Animal Crackers Recipe: A Guilt-Free Nostalgic Treat You’ll Love!

For those seeking keto-friendly desserts, look no further than these keto animal crackers. This simple recipe is fun to make, decorate, and share. Whether you have a child on a specialty keto-friendly diet or you just want to recreate this classic childhood dessert, these almond flour animal cookies are a delicious treat for the whole family! These cookies evoke fond memories, reminiscent of those packed in lunchboxes. These sugar-free frosted animal cookies have a delicate crunch and are coated with a keto white chocolate frosting and dipped in sprinkles.

The Base: Keto Shortbread Sugar Cookie Dough

The dough for these low-carb animal cookies is the same as a keto graham cracker recipe, lightly sweet and similar to traditional animal crackers. This recipe is based on the keto shortbread sugar cookie recipe, which also serves as the foundation for popular gluten-free keto Samoa cookies and keto thin mint cookies. It's a versatile recipe that can be adapted for many uses, including making keto animal crackers.

Key Ingredients and Their Role

Achieving the right texture and flavor in keto baking requires understanding the role of each ingredient:

Almond Flour: Fine-grained almond flour provides the most flour-like texture.
Xanthan Gum: Gluten-free flours, like almond flour, lack the binding capabilities of gluten. Xanthan gum is added to bind the ingredients together.
Sweetener: Lakanto and Swerve are recommended as 1:1 sugar replacements.
Food Coloring: Traditional food coloring can be used, or raspberry powder for a natural alternative. The amount added depends on the desired pink hue.
Sprinkles: Traditional rainbow sprinkles can be used sparingly. Alternatively, The Sprinkle Company on Etsy offers keto-friendly sprinkles.

Essential Equipment

Food Processor: The easiest way to mix the dough. If you don’t have one, freezer your butter instead and grate it in like you grate cheese and then mix with a hand or stand mixer. This will give your dough the structure it needs and keep the butter small and well incorporated.
Cookie Cutters: Mini animal cookie cutters are ideal for creating the classic shapes.
Parchment Paper: Used for rolling out and baking the cookies.
Rolling Pin
Baking Sheet
Measuring Cups/ Spoons

Dough Preparation: A Step-by-Step Guide

This recipe isn’t difficult, but does take more time because there are a handful of steps (mostly just freezing the dough periodically) so keep that in mind when planning ahead.

Combine Dry Ingredients: Add almond flour, salt, xanthan gum, and erythritol to a food processor. Pulse to combine.
Incorporate Wet Ingredients: Add unsalted butter (cut into cubes) and almond milk. Process until the dough forms a ball, scraping down the sides as needed.
Divide and Flatten: Form the dough into two small balls and press each into a disk.
Chill the Dough: Like a standard sugar cookie dough, chilling is a huge part of the process into order to give structure and stability to thinly rolled dough that’s cut into shapes. Whether you choose to make smaller animal size shapes similar to the original or opt to use large cookie cutters, freezing the dough in a series of steps is literally the key to your success. It will take time, it will take patience, but it’s really NOT hard. Divide it into four separate dough balls. I prefer to pat mine into a rectangular or square shape that’s not too thick to lend to quicker chilling of the dough. I think working in batches of four is the easiest for cranking out several smaller animal sized cookies, and a batch of dough divided in two for a large cookie cutter.
Roll the Dough: Place the chilled dough out onto a greased piece of parchment and top with another piece of greased parchment Roll the dough out to 1 centimeter thick. Roll each disk between two pieces of parchment paper until 1/8" thick. The thinner the dough, the crisper the cookies will be.
Cut Out Shapes: Remove the top sheet of parchment and cut the dough using cookie cutters. If the dough is picking up off the bottom parchment, place it in the freezer for 15 minutes to harden the butter.
Freeze Cut Cookies: Place cut cookies in the freezer for 15 minutes to make them easier to move.

Baking Instructions

Preheat Oven: Preheat oven to 350 F. Preheating is important for even baking, especially with gluten free ingredients.
Arrange Cookies: Remove cookies from the freezer and spread them out on a parchment paper-lined cookie sheet.
Bake: Bake in preheated oven for 8-11 minutes, until the edges are golden. Baking time may vary depending on the size of your cookie. These animal cookies took around 7-8 minutes to lightly golden brown. If you have a larger cookie it may take ten minutes or more so be mindful and don’t leave the kitchen!
Cool: Allow cookies to cool completely on the parchment paper before moving.

Keto-Friendly Glaze

Melt White Chocolate: Melt sugar-free white chocolate in the microwave, using 30-second intervals. Stir every 30 seconds until smooth. The sugar free white chocolate I like to use is by ChocZero.
Color the Chocolate: Divide the melted white chocolate into two bowls. Add food coloring or raspberry powder to one of the bowls and stir. Adjust the amount to achieve the desired pink shade.
Dip the Cookies: Dip the cookies into the melted chocolate, alternating between the white and pink. Place them on a cookie rack nested into a rimmed cookie sheet.
Add Sprinkles: Option to sprinkle the cookies with rainbow sprinkles.
Set: Allow cookies to set completely by placing them in the fridge for at least an hour.

Making the Keto Sugar Cookie Glaze

The glaze is really simple to make and works best with powdered low carb sweeteners (I personally prefer this brand). Mix in your flavoring of choice (I like vanilla extract) some heavy cream (start slow here and add more if needed to thin it). Whisk until all the lumps are gone and voila, keto friendly sugar cookie glaze! I used a little pink Wilton gel dye for the pink colored cookies, let them cool completely before dipping and just lightly dunked the tops into the icing to coat. Let the cookies rest and set over a cooling rack so any excess can drip off. Add keto friendly sprinkles if desired and leave them rest for several hours (I mean you have to eat a couple though just to taste test) to dry.

Read also: Easy Low-Carb Cheese Crackers

Tips and Techniques for Keto Sugar Cookie Cut Outs

This dough recipe is made from my popular Keto Shortbread Sugar Cookie recipe. It takes around 5 min to make and around 40-60 minutes to chill.
After the dough balls are chilled (40-60 minutes), preheat your oven to 350 degrees.
With each chilled dough ball (one at a time), place it between two sheets of parchment paper and roll it roughly into a slab of dough 1/4 an inch thick. Too thick and it will under bake; too thin and it will be hard to cut out.
Once the dough is rolled thin, place it back into the freezer for around ten minutes or so to freeze a second time. Keep all the other dough balls (rolled or unrolled) in the freezer while you work with one batch.
Cut out your shapes and use a small butter knife to help you move them to a baking sheet (if needed).
Place each cookie onto a parchment paper covered baking sheet and bake.

Common Keto Baking Questions and Solutions

What do you do with the scraps? The dough often warms up while you’re cutting out your cookies. If you find you have a lot of scraps that will need to be re-rolled, place them back in the freezer again to chill and re-roll and repeat. While I re-chill scraps, I use another dough ball to cut out cookies so I can work through more efficiently.
My cookies spread out too much while baking, what did I do wrong? HEAT IS THE ENEMY! Cold pan and cold cookies are crucial for baking and reducing the spread of the cookie dough on the pan. Pop your pan back in the freezer (I told you a lot of freezing) for a few minutes before baking to help with this.
Can I sub almond flour with coconut flour? Honestly, I don’t know because I have never done it. However, I have been baking with these ingredients for a long time and know that coconut flour is often not a good substitute because it has very different chemical properties when it comes to baking. If you try it, let me know!

Storage Instructions

Place your dried cookies into an air tight container and store for up to a week or so. These will also freeze easily (iced or un-iced) if desired.

Recipe Variations and Creative Ideas

Shapes: Switch up the shapes by using different cookie cutters.
Frosting: Use keto cream cheese frosting instead of white chocolate.
Natural Sprinkles: Use crushed, freeze-dried raspberries, blueberries, and strawberries for a touch of color.

Freezing Instructions

As with most keto cookies, you can store the dough in the refrigerator or freezer until you are ready to roll them out and bake them. Store keto animal cookie dough wrapped in plastic wrap and then place in a freezer safe bag. To bake your cookies from frozen, let them sit at room temperature for 5 minutes rolling out the dough and cutting shapes.

Nutritional Information

Serving Size: Using this recipe, I was able to make 70 cookies. Which would mean the nutritional information below is based on 2 cookies. Nutritional information: based on using Better Bake white chocolate chips, 2 teaspoons of Wilton's rainbow sprinkles, and 2 tablespoons of raspberry powder.

Keto Frosted Animal Cookies: FAQs

Can I substitute almond flour with another type of flour? Almond flour is a key ingredient for the keto aspect of these cookies, but if you need a substitute, you can try using sunflower seed flour. However, this may alter the taste and texture slightly.
How should I store the frosted animal cookies? You can store the cookies in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 5 days. For longer storage, keep them in the refrigerator for up to 2 weeks.
What can I use instead of monk fruit or erythritol? You can use any keto-friendly sweetener you prefer, such as stevia or allulose. Just make sure to adjust the quantity according to the sweetness level of the substitute.
Are these cookies suitable for a gluten-free diet? Yes! These keto frosted animal cookies are made with almond and coconut flour, making them completely gluten-free.
Can I make these cookies vegan? To make them vegan, you can substitute the unsalted butter with coconut oil or a vegan butter alternative, and use a vegan sweetener.

Read also: Magnesium Supplements for Keto

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