Easily the best keto sugar cookies you will ever make. This recipe produces sturdy but tender cookies, perfect for decorating with sugar-free royal icing. They’re fun to make for any holiday or occasion!
If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck, right? And if it looks like a sugar cookie and tastes like a sugar cookies, it’s a sugar cookie, right? Or not.
Perhaps I shouldn’t actually call these keto sugar cookies, since they don’t have a single grain of sugar in them. False advertising and all that.
But sometimes keto recipes deserve a little poetic license. I’ve got Keto Banana Bread with no bananas, and Keto Oatmeal with no oats. They just look and taste like the real deal and that’s all that matters. So why not sugar free sugar cookies too?
And during the holidays, who doesn’t love playing around with fun cookie cutters and pretty colors of royal icing? We look forward to it every year, when we crank the holiday music and make a horrific mess in the kitchen. It’s a family tradition!
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A must make cookie recipe
These keto sugar cookies have stood the test of time. I first published this recipe in October 2012, and I decided to give them a little update. I changed very little about the cookie itself but created a perfect sugar free royal icing to pair with it. So that you can decorate to your heart’s content!
What makes them so great? Well for one thing, they don’t spread or rise, and they hold their shape perfectly during baking. And if you’re careful and keep your eye on them, you can make sure that they don’t brown too much, so that they stay a pale golden brown like a traditional sugar cookie.
Once cooled, they are both sturdy and tender. You bite into one thinking it’s going to be too crisp, but it has just the right amount of give under your teeth. And yet they still hold up to all the decorating you care to throw at them.
The only changes I made to the cookie dough itself was to swap out the oat flour for coconut flour, and leave out the xanthan gum altogether. Everything else stayed the same, including the chilling time and baking time.
Reader Testimonials
Testimonial “I’d never attempted keto cut-out sugar cookies before and was afraid they might fall apart when rolling/cutting, but nope – these behaved amazingly well. Oh and absolutely delicious!” — Stephanie
“I’ve been craving a good keto sugar cookie but the recipes I’ve tried have come up short – until yours. These are so good! They’re buttery and perfectly sweet all on their own, and they were easy to make. Thank you so much for another fantastic recipe!” — Sara
“This is a wonderful recipe, thanks for sharing! This also makes a great base for a fruit pizza. I have my second batch in the oven right now. ????”– Amanda
Ingredients you need
Cookie Ingredients
- Almond flour: For keto sugar cookies with really good texture, make sure you use a finely ground almond flour like Bob’s Red Mill. You can use sunflower seed flour as a nut-free alternative, but your cookies will be more gray in color.
- Coconut flour: A little coconut flour helps make the dough less fragile and easier to work with. You can also use a little oat fiber.
- Swerve Sweetener: You really need an erythritol based sweetener such as Swerve for crisp cookies. Allulose and BochaSweet simply won’t work here. Learn more about keto sweeteners and how they affect your baked goods.
- Butter: If you use salted butter, you can omit the additional salt in the recipe. Be sure to use softened butter for better mixing.
- Pantry staples: Eggs, vanilla, salt.
Royal Icing Ingredients
- Powdered Sweetener: I use a mix of Swerve Confectioners and BochaSweet for this icing. You can use all powdered Swerve but it looks a little dried out when it hardens. By mixing in some BochaSweet, the icing has a nice sheen to it.
- Egg white powder: Classic royal icing takes meringue powder to help it firm up and harden, but it often contains sugar. I use powdered egg whites to the same effect. In a pinch, you could use some pasteurized egg whites and then reduce the water.
- Vanilla extract: Royal icing isn’t very flavorful, so l like to add a little vanilla to make it taste better.
- Natural food coloring: I prefer to use natural food colorings, but you can use any food colorings you like. It’s tricky to get a true red with natural dyes, so I add some beet powder to help.
Step-by-step directions
1. Prepare the cookie dough: In a medium bowl, whisk together the almond flour, coconut flour, and salt. In a large bowl, beat the butter and sweetener together until creamy. Beat in the egg and vanilla extract, and then beat in the almond flour mixture until dough comes together.
2. Roll out: Turn the dough out onto a work surface with a silicone baking mat or a large piece of parchment paper, lightly dusted with coconut flour. Pat into a rough circle and then top with a large piece of parchment paper. Roll out to about ⅓-inch thickness.
3. Cut out: Using cookie cutters of your choice, cut out cookies and lift carefully with a small, offset spatula or knife. Place the cookies on baking sheets lined with silicone liners or parchment paper and freeze for 30 minutes.
4. Bake: Once chilled, bake the cookies at 325F for 12 to 14 minutes, or until they are just starting to brown around the edges, switching and rotating the pans halfway through baking. Remove from the oven and let cool completely on pan. The cookies will still be quite soft when removed from the oven but will firm up as they cool.
Working with sugar free royal icing
If you want to decorate sugar cookies properly, you really need royal icing. It’s thin enough to make beautiful patterns, but it also hardens as it dries. I had to experiment quite a bit to get a keto royal icing that worked well. You can use this same icing on my Keto Gingerbread Cookies.
Why use two sweeteners?
I use both powdered Swerve and powdered BochaSweet for this recipe. Swerve hardens and dry better than BochaSweet, but can become a little dull as it sits. BochaSweet on its own makes the icing too goopy and soft, but gives it a nice sheen when combined with Swerve. The combination of these two sweeteners allows me to take advantage of their desired properties and offset the undesired ones.
You could also use powdered xylitol in place of the BochaSweet. I am not sure if allulose will work, as it tends to make things so soft that they never firm up properly.
To make
Whisk together the sweeteners and the egg white powder in a large bowl. Add water, 1 tablespoon at a time, whisking in between, until the desired consistency is achieved. Whisk in the vanilla extract.
It’s important to get just the right consistency. You want the icing to be slightly drippy but not runny. This allows you to make outlines of shapes, and then “flood” them in by zig-zagging lines of icing within the outlines. Then use a toothpick to run all the lines together into a smooth coating.
Coloring the icing
Once you’ve got your icing to the right consistency, divide it up into separate bowls and color as desired.
These days, there are an increasing number of all-natural food dye options. Most of them are vegetable or plant-based, and they tend to produce pastel colors rather than true, deep reds and greens.
But I recently found this beet powder coloring which makes a much stronger red color. It tends to thicken the icing a bit so you need to add more water to get the right consistency.
Expert tips
To get that perfect pale golden sugar cookie color, use a silicone baking mat. It protect the cookies from the heat better than parchment paper.
Let the cookies cool completely before decorating them. If they are still warm, the icing will melt and run off the cookies! Also let them cool completely before attempting to freeze them.
Allow the royal icing to harden completely overnight. Simply lay all the decorated cookies out on cookie sheets and set in a cool, dry location. Once the icing is hard, you can layer the cookies on top of one another without risk of smearing the decorations.
Frequently Asked Questions
You can indeed! I actually have some undecorated cookies in my freezer right now. You can freeze them with or without the royal icing. I like to make a big batch weeks in advance, and then decorate them closer to the holidays.
This keto sugar cookie recipe has 4.8g of carbs and 2.4g of fiber per serving. That comes to 2.4g net carbs per serving of 3 to 4 small cookies. The exact amount depends on the size of your cookies.
It all comes down to what sweeteners you use. Erythritol is the only sugar substitute that produces crisp cookies. Any amount of xylitol, allulose, or BochaSweet will prevent the cookies from crisping up properly. For more information, read my Guide to Keto Sweeteners.
Keto Sugar Cookies Recipe
Ingredients
Cookies:
- 2 ¼ cups almond flour
- 2 tablespoon coconut flour (can also use oat fiber)
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- 6 tablespoon butter softened
- ½ cup Swerve Sweetener granular
- 1 large egg
- ½ teaspoon vanilla extract
Royal Icing:
- ½ cup powdered Swerve Sweetener
- ½ cup powdered BochaSweet (or powdered xylitol)
- 1 tablespoon egg white powder
- 2 to 4 tablespoon Water room temperature
- ½ teaspoon vanilla extract
- Natural food coloring
Instructions
Cookies:
- Prepare a work surface with a silicone baking mat or a large piece of parchment paper, and dust lightly with coconut flour. Line two large baking sheets silicone liners or parchment paper.
- In a medium bowl, whisk together the almond flour, coconut flour, and salt. In a large bowl, beat the butter and sweetener together until creamy. Beat in the egg and vanilla extract, and then beat in the almond flour mixture until dough comes together.
- Turn the dough out onto the prepared work surface. Pat into a rough circle and then top with a large piece of parchment paper. Roll out to about ⅓-inch thickness.
- Using cookie cutters of choice, cut out cookies and lift carefully with a small, offset spatula or knife. Place on the prepared baking sheets and freeze for 30 minutes. Gather up the scraps and re-roll your dough, to cut out as many cookies as possible.
- Preheat the oven to 325F.
- Bake the cookies 12 to 14 minutes, or until they are just starting to brown around the edges, switching and rotating the pans halfway through baking. Remove from the oven and let cool completely on pan. The cookies will still be quite soft when removed from the oven but will firm up as they cool.
Royal Icing:
- In a large bowl, whisk together the sweeteners and the egg white powder. Add water, 1 tablespoon at a time, whisking in between, until desired consistency is achieved. It should drizzle off the end of the whisk in ribbons, but shouldn't be too thin. Whisk in the vanilla extract.
- Divide into sepate bowls and add food coloring in small amounts until the desired color is achieved.
- Place icing in small ziploc bags or piping bags with the very corner snipped off to pipe outlines. Let the outlines dry at least 10 to 20 minutes before filling in.
- To fill in the outlines, pipe frosting into the outline in a back and forth motion. It does not have to be perfect and there may be gaps. Then simply use a toothpick to fill the icing into the gaps.
- Let the flooded icing dry completely before adding any additional icing decoration. (Or do what I did for one cookie, add little dots of another color and swirl them in with a toothpick. So many fun options!).
Joanne E Hein says
I absolutely love this perfect sugar cookie for Christmas time!
I managed to continue losing weight over Christmas last year as I made these like 3-4 times.this year I couldn’t wait to have them again. Thanks to this baking challenge I no longer have to wait. my family is excited tonight to have the beloved Christmas Sugar Cookie ala Keto❣😁
Letícia Valim says
The recipe did not work very well: cookies were too soft to cut with the cookie cutters even after 40 minutes in the fridge. Also the baking time should be cut in half cause mine were almost burned after 7 minutes in the oven (right temperature and all). I was really looking forward to making them for these holidays but it was such a fuzz that I am very discouraged to try them again. 😒😔
Carolyn says
I am sorry but this recipe works perfectly as written, as you can see from the majority of reviews. Sounds to me like you didn’t have enough almond flour in there.
Tracy Sheehy says
These were so easy to make and they stayed together while cutting them out. I forgot to freeze them first and they still turned out. The texture is perfect sugar cookie texture!
Leanna says
so thankful for an awesome sugar cookie recipe that is keto! It is our family tradition to make sugar cookies around the holidays and the kids love to decorate them. this is such a blessing to continue the tradition in a way that I don’t feel guilty or bloated about!! the kids love these cookies and don’t complain at all!
Wendy Dixon says
I just love this receipe! I was so excited to have a healthy alternative! My family loves them too!
Lisa Van Tuyle says
I made this recipe for the November challenge and all in all it was super easy. The instructions for rolling and cutting out the cookies are spot on and I cannot believe how easy it was. My royal icing didn’t not come out shiny but that most likely was on my part. I had to make my own confectioner xylitol as I’m currently on vacation in Mexico and they don’t carry it. I also started with 2 tbsp of water and it thinned it too much. I should have added additional sweetener to thicken it back up but didn’t. Operator error. Still, an amazing cookie recipe.
Denise Gingerich says
Christmas isn’t complete without cutout sugar cookies. Very easy recipe that anyone can make & the best part is they’re Keto!!
Teressa B Pavlas says
So the new Swerve cannot be used in this cookie recipe? My store does not have the original Swerve only the “new”. I do have some of the original Swerve (I stock piled it when they announced the change!)
Carolyn says
Not if you want them properly crisp. I’d use your store of the original for these. Swerve does have a erythritol/monk fruit option available on Amazon that will also work. https://amzn.to/46mEESQ
Linda Byrd says
Because of your “challenge” I decided to make these. I thought they were good, but my talent is certainly not icing cookies (I’ve never done it before). I took them to a social event and, as I usually do, I labeled them gluten free, sugar free. They all disappeared and I was told by many people they thought those cookies were GREAT. Yay! The coconut chocolate chip cookies used to be my go to cookie, but looks like everyone else prefers these. Only thing is my kitchen looks like a train wreck when I’m finished.
Carolyn says
Glad they were enjoyed!
Angie says
Made these for the November cooking challenge, and oh my, I’ve eaten three already😂. Easy to follow recipe and my non-keto husband said they are amazing.
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Kathleen Pancoast says
Just made these they are delish! Perfect texture and fun to decorate.
Claudia Barrera says
Used this recipe last year and these cookies were so delicious ❤️❤️