Things I have been cooking lately #155: Gestational Diabetes friendly peanut butter brownies

When I started my virtually no sugar, low carb gestational diabetes diet I thought I was going to get mad sugar cravings and wake up in the night sweating and thinking of cake. That hasn’t happened. Although I sometimes dream of Ben &Jerry’s peanut butter cup ice-cream or wish I could just have a piece of fresh tiger bread, I have mostly been fine with getting to eat pretty much as much cheese as I want. What I have been missing is baking. A lot. Like a whole lot. So I decided to do a little experiment and rework one of my favourite brownie recipes to make it GD friendly… and it worked! Not only are these brownies very low in sugar and carbs but they’re also gluten free and passed the 15/30/45/60 blood sugar test advocated by the gestationaldiabetes.co.uk website. What that means is that I tested my blood sugar every fifteen minutes for an hour after eating one of these (paired with some creme fraiche) and all the readings were below my after food target. (Please note that if you have gestational diabetes or type 2 diabetes and want to try these you should repeat the same test on yourself to ensure you are not missing a spike. Everyone’s tolerance is different).

Gestational Diabetes friendly peanut butter brownies

200g 85% cocoa dark chocolate
175g butter
350g xylitol (I bought this in the sugar aisle at Sainsbury’s)
130g ground almonds
3 eggs
1/2 cup of no added sugar smooth peanut butter (I used Whole Earth)

Preheat your oven to 180 C and line a square baking dish with greaseproof paper.

Place the chocolate and butter in a heatproof bowl and suspend over a saucepan of simmering water until melted. The bowl should not touch the water.

Remove the bowl from the heat, add the xylitol and stir until combined. Add the almonds and stir again. Add the eggs and mix well. Pour into the prepared baking dish.

Pop the peanut butter in the microwave for 30 seconds. Pour the peanut butter over the brownie batter in the baking dish and swirl with a spatula.

Bake for 30 minutes. Allow to cool in the dish for about 30 minutes before removing to a wire rack to cool completely. Pair with creme fraiche, double or clotted cream to serve.

Makes 16 brownies