For low carb baking I have had to learn new techniques for new ingredients. I use ground almonds, coconut flour, soya flour and ground hazelnuts for baking. Cream cheese can also give quite "bready" texture in some recipes. Baked goods made with these low carb flours can be a bit greasy and sticky on the fingers and so I have had to find new ways of baking. i think the secret of a good low carb cakey structure is in beating egg whites until they are really, really stiff. I have also added more egg than recipies ask for in some things.
Ground almonds and butter can be quite greasy, especially if you substitute quantities directly with wheat flour recipies, which is what I did to start with. It tastes ok, but it feels greasy. I found an almost (added) fat free sponge cake recipe based on a lemon sponge recipe in the Neris and India Idiot Proof Diet cookbook. I have added a couple of ingedients to this and invented both a lemon drizzle cake and a lemon and lime poppyseed cake based on this recipe. I find ground almonds quite bland for light flavours, like lemon.
My preference when making any kind of chocolate cake is to use ground hazelnuts, I think this is a much nicer flavour combination. I have also substituted some cocoa for the ground nuts in some recipies, which is also lower carb than using chocolate and has quite an intense flavour. I have made a chocolate sponge type cake and a lovely chocolate cake developed from a recipe I found in a very old cookery book by Rabbi Lionel Blueusing ground hazelnuts. you can occasionally buy them in Lidl, but I buy my ground hazelnuts on ebay.
I like to make raspberry muffins with coconut flour. this is based on the recipe on the packet.
I have also made muffins with soya flour. When I use soya flour I tend to use more strongly flavoured ingredients and I make a spiced pecan muffin with soya flour.
For low carb baking you do need to experiment. Until I reduced the butter content and used more beaten egg white I found that my sponges tended to sink in the middle, although they tasted ok.
There are some nice cake recipies around. I have seen a courgette cake which I have not yet made in the Low Carb Gourmet. There is also a lovely brownie recipe in that book, with chocolate peanut butter frosting, which is my sons favorite low carb cake. This same book also has a low carb shortbread recipe, which i have not made, using protien powder.
You need to experiment. My electric whisk has come in to its own beating egg white since I started low carb baking.
