First Things First Then Sweetening The Evening

For our Memorial Day meal I wanted to do something a little more festive than just pulling smoked pork out of the freezer and warming it up, plus I was craving something desserty. 

Faux strawberry pretzel salad

 Crust

3/4 cup ground walnuts (takes about 1 1/2 cups walnut pieces)

1 1/2 tablespoons softened butter

1 tablespoon sweetener of choice (I used Lakanto golden monk fruit)

sea salt 

Grind the walnuts into a fine powder, but be very careful because the time between fine powder and walnut butter is just a mini second. (Ask me how I know. Anyone want a walnut butter and sugar free jelly sandwich on no carb bread?)  Mix the walnut meal with the softened butter and the sweetener  and press into the bottom of an 8x8 oven safe pan. Bake at 350 for about 10 minutes, remove from the oven, sprinkle lightly with sea salt, and set it aside until it is completely cool.

Creamy Goodness

3 ounces softened cream cheese

1/4 cup powdered sweetener (I used powdered Swerve)

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/2 cup heavy cream whipped to stiff peaks

Stir the cream cheese, sweetener and the vanilla until smooth. Gently fold  the whipped cream into the cream cheese mixture. Spread it over the completely cooled crust and pop it into the refrigerator for at least 2 hours.

Cut into small squares to serve and add a dollop of sugar free strawberry jam.

I made this so I could have something decadent for our Memorial Day lackluster meal. Even though it was keto I offered some to TheHub. It is always a good idea to get a non-ketonian's opinion to see if it will pass. I am guessing he liked it because he had 3 servings on Memorial Day, forgot  it was in the laundry room fridge Tuesday, but had 2 more servings Wednesday night. Yes, I am calling it a hit!. 

If you are not doing keto, you might use pretzel crumbs in place of the walnuts, and use sugar and confectioner's sugar instead. The sweeteners I used are all 1-1 substituted for real sugars. 

If you are doing keto, this is a fabulous occasional treat. I would love to have it several times a week, but that’s a no go for me. 

This is much tastier than the traditional pretzel salad which uses Jello instead of jam, but then I detest Jello so it might just be a personal preference.

I will confess I did not use jam. I had some perfect strawberries and I just cooked them until they felt a little thick and then stuck them in the fridge to get cold. It worked well but if my strawberries had not been so sweet I probably would have needed to add some sweetener.

This is definitely a keeper!