Longtime followers know of my mad love for Starbucks, and in particular for the Pumpkin Spice Latte. Hold on, all you pumpkin-spice haters – we know of your revulsion and we celebrate your difference. Go on with your bad selves. This is not the keto recipe you are looking for.
BUT, if you are like me – a person of exceptional taste and high standards – and lurv the Pumpkin Spice Latte AND if you also shudder at all that sugar, this is totally the recipe for you!
David and I have been doing the Ketogenic Diet since January 1. David wanted to do it for health reasons and I was willing to give it a try for weight loss. I’m happy to report that I’m at my lowest weight in five years. It’s also been great for my health overall – my energy levels are more even, I feel good. Even my teeth and gums are better.
Since I keep below 50 carbohydrates/day, and a grande Starbucks Pumpkin Spice Latte is 50g of carbs right there, having one simply isn’t an option. There are no “treat days” on the keto diet and, really, if you have too many carbs, it bumps you out of ketosis and then you get sugar cravings. Totally not worth it.
So, I set out to make my own! And I’m pretty pleased with the the results.
Ingredients
1 pie pumpkin
4 T butter
Stevia
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
2 teaspoons ground ginger
3 dry allspice berries
1 whole star anise pod
½ teaspoon fresh ground nutmeg
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cut the pie pumpkin (smaller ones are sweeter and more tender) in half, scrape out the seeds and baste the insides with 1T butter. Fill glass baking dish with about 1/2″ water. Put the pumpkin in shell-side down and bake for ~15 min, to get it nicely browned. Then invert and bake another 30-45 minutes. Basically the pumpkin should be really tender when poked with a fork.
Scrape the cooked pumpkin into a food processor. Put the empty shells in the compost bin. 🙂 Melt 3 T butter. Process the pumpkin and the butter together. (You can use more or less butter, according to taste, but it adds to the richness of the flavor. And, if you’re doing keto, you want to bump up the good fat anyway.) I had some nice buttery/roasted pumpkin leavings in the glass pan from the water baking down, so I scraped that up, diluted with a bit of water, and added that, too.
Spice to taste. I used this recipe and put in about half of what I made.
Blend all until smooth. You can sweeten the pumpkin batter with Stevia, but I prefer to sweeten the coffee. I kept the batter in the fridge for two weeks with no problem.
To make the latte, brew the coffee (or espresso, if you’re fancee). I have a frother that is the light of my morning. Because too much dairy gets to me, I use 1/2 cup soy milk in the frother, but you could use cream. Once it begins stirring, I drop in about three spoonfuls of my pumpkin batter. (I do both froth and heat.) Depends on how much pumpkin flavor you like! Then pour the finished blend into the coffee cup. Like I mentioned previously, I sweeten my coffee with Stevia first. I sprinkle a little of my pumpkin spice blend on top, for added aroma.
As one cup of pumpkin has 8 carbs and my pie pumpkin made about two cups, that makes the carb content negligible. Plus, it’s delicious and satisfies my pumpkin spice latte longing. Helluva lot cheaper, too!
And questions or modifications you’ve tried?