Low Carb Peanut Butter Treat

I’m coming to find that EVERYTHING is available on the Internet.  If I need a product, it’s available on amazon.  I’m using their UK and German websites to fill a lot of needs while we’re in Poland.  If I need information, about.com is right up there with Wikipedia.  I’ve found a lot of practical advise and recipes on about.com regarding low carb foods – some interesting snacks ideas to keep the boredom at bay.

This idea came from a video I saw there recently.  It’s taken some work to track down the source because they have so much info and what’s being featured changes often.  The video used all-natural peanut butter, but our little shop didn’t have any, so we just bought a small bag of salted peanuts instead.

I can’t say that I’ve been totally without sweets as of late.  I’ve sampled some wonderful treats at friends’ homes recently.  As a baker, I can’t look a hostess who has gone to the trouble of making something special for me and say, “no thanks, I’m on a diet.”  I enjoy the splurge and appreciate her efforts.  One must live life after all.  When it comes to meals at home or restaurants though, we’ve been on the straight and narrow for what feels like years!

That’s where this little treat comes in.  If I really use my imagination, it reminds me of the peanut butter filling in those buckeye candies.

Ingredients

1 cup peanut butter
1/2 cup or 4 scoops vanilla whey powder
1 teaspoon vanilla
3 packets Stevia
Unsweetened coconut or ground almonds

Directions

• I used 1 1/2 cups salted peanuts and 2 tablespoons of olive oil to replace the peanut butter.  Just make sure your peanut butter doesn’t have sugar in it.  Many of the popular brands do; that’s why they taste so good!
• I used a vanilla whey powder that’s sweetened with Stevia, again, just make sure it doesn’t contain sugar.  You may have to adjust the amount of whey powder you use.  You need enough to make a firm dough.
• Going from memory, I actually forgot the vanilla extract.  I can see where they’ll be much better with it.
• I put everything in my mini-food processor attachment for my immersion blender and processed until smooth.
• I then formed the mixture into 20 walnut-sized balls and rolled them in the ground almonds that I had left over from the low carb raspberry muffins we made last week.
• Refrigerate.

They were tasty for a sugar-free snack, but not very pretty, so I pressed them into candy molds for the photo at the top of this post.  The recipe analyzer at caloriecount.com, also part of about.com had this to say:

100 calories, 6.9g fat, 3.3g carb, .8g fiber, 7.4g protein