Some of the most cherished desserts have chocolate as the main ingredient. Think truffles, mousse, brownies, and, of course, chocolate cake. These are pretty easy to make low-carb with the right ingredients.
But when it comes to your choice of chocolate for keto baking, dark and sugar-free is the way to go.
Dark chocolate is made with 75-100% cocoa solids and no milk, unlike milk chocolate. It often contains cocoa butter and sugar, among other additional ingredients.
Keto-friendly versions, however, use non-nutritive sweeteners or omit the sweeteners completely. This type of chocolate is a great alternative to baking chocolate in many desserts, mainly because it has higher quality cocoa compared to baking chocolate.
When buying dark chocolate for your keto desserts, read the ingredients list and nutrition facts label to see if it has any added sugar and check its carb count.
Many brands labeled “sugar-free” contain honey, maltitol, or another sweetener that isn’t compatible with the keto diet.
If you’d like to see examples of dark chocolate that you can use to make chocolate keto desserts, below are our top 3 choices. But first, let’s talk a little bit more about dark chocolate on the keto diet.
Dark Chocolate and Keto: A Match Made in Low-Carb Heaven?
Regular dark chocolate with 75-80% cacao solids has around 10g of net carbs in a 1oz serving [1]. This is 20% of the usual daily carb allowance on a keto diet.
So, in a way, regular dark chocolate can be keto-friendly if you keep your intake to one square or use it sparingly in desserts.
But there’s an even better alternative: sugar-free dark chocolate.
Many brands of sugar-free chocolate contain a fraction of the carbs found in regular dark chocolate, typically around 3g net carbs in a 1oz serving.
Most keto-focused brands use low-carb sweeteners like monk fruit or erythritol, while others omit added sweeteners entirely to help keep the carb count low.
And speaking of carb count, there’s a reason chocolate, no matter how dark, always has some amount of carbs: it has naturally occurring carbohydrates.
Around 30% of cocoa is digestible carbs. However, because dark chocolate contains cocoa butter in addition to cocoa solids, the total carb count of dark chocolate without added sugar is pretty low.
Besides helping you stay in ketosis while enjoying dessert, keto dark chocolate is a good source of magnesium, copper, potassium, fiber, and antioxidants linked to better brain health [2].
Now that you know you don’t have to worry about enjoying the right kind of chocolate on keto, here are some great examples of sugar-free dark chocolate brands to use in keto baking.
Lily’s Original Dark Chocolate
Lily’s is a leading producer of sugar-free chocolates as well as an Amazon bestseller. Their Orignal Dark Chocolate is a great snack on its own but works wonderfully as a keto baking ingredient, too. At 55% cocoa, it’s sure to lend your keto desserts plenty of high-quality chocolate flavor.
Its ingredients include fair-trade chocolate, chicory root fiber, sunflower lecithin, stevia, and erythritol. In other words, only natural ingredients.
Besides being keto-friendly, this melt-in-your-mouth chocolate is also non-GMO and gluten-free; however, it’s not vegan since it does contain milk fat. Nonetheless, it may be suitable for some people with milk allergies since it does not contain milk protein.
Lily’s also offers Extra Dark Chocolate bars with 70% cacao content if you’d like to add even more flavor to your chocolate desserts.
Nutrition per serving (30g)
130 calories | 10g fat | 7g net carbs | 2g protein
Choc Zero Dark Chocolate Chips
If you prefer chocolate chips over bars in your baking, Choc Zero offers sugar-free and low-carb chocolate chips made with quality chocolate.
These are also soy-free, gluten-free, dairy-free, and vegan since they contain dark chocolate, corn fiber, sunflower lecithin, monk fruit, and vanilla. These simple but quality ingredients lend these chips a rich chocolate flavor and creamy texture.
Ways to use this product are in keto chocolate chip cookies, muffins, blondies, and sundaes. They’re also suitable in keto brownie recipes and for making ganache. Still, it’s best to stick to pure chocolate with minimum add-ins for your ganache recipes. Pure chocolate melts more evenly and easily compared to products with emulsifiers and additives, which this one is.
And because they’re sweetened exclusively with monk fruit, they won’t cause any digestive upset like chocolates containing sugar alcohols. Choc Zero also offers milk, white chocolate, and peanut butter chocolate chips if you want more variety with your chocolate chips.
Nutrition per serving (14g)
60 calories | 5g fat | 1g net carbs | 0g protein
CHOCOperfection Dark European Chocolate Bar
CHOCOperfection is a manufacturer of gourmet sugar-free chocolates. So, if you need genuinely high-quality chocolate that will make a difference in your baked goods, give this bar a try.
These bars speak “luxurious” with everything from the packaging to the ingredients and the flavor. The bars are super thick and scrumptious on their own. Adding them to your chocolate keto desserts will make a big difference in how they turn out.
These are made with the usual ingredients we see in keto-friendly chocolate, like cocoa solids, cocoa butter, chicory root fiber, and erythritol, to name a few. But they taste like regular bars of dark chocolate, with no strange aftertaste or bitterness.
And while these are pricey compared to most bars on the market, CHOCOperfection offers a money-back guarantee in case you feel these aren’t up to standard.
Nutrition per serving (50g)
197 calories | 18g fat | 2g net carbs | 1g protein
References:
- U.S. Department of Agriculture. Agricultural Research Service. FoodData Central. Chocolate, dark, 70-85% cacao solids. Apr 2019. https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/fdc-app.html#/food-details/170273/nutrients
- Katz DL, Doughty K, Ali A. Cocoa and chocolate in human health and disease. Antioxid Redox Signal. 2011;15(10):2779-2811. doi:10.1089/ars.2010.3697
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