If you've ever tried the lemon cake at your favorite coffee shop you may have found yourself chasing blood sugar the rest of the day. Try making it at home where you know what's in it! This amazing recipe from Charlie Allred removes the sugar!

Lately, I've been obsessed with making low-carb or sugar-free baked goods. This recipe is DIVINE! I’ve had to make it twice in a week before since my family inhales this Starbucks copycat lemon loaf. Everyone LOVES IT! 

The icing was easy too! I just mixed the Swerve sweetener with lemon juice and I had frosting. If you want your frosting less lemony, add a little heavy cream or almond milk. This loaf gets frosted when hot, so the frosting basically melts, then hardens up again as it cools. I never thought I would eat frosting again (except when my sugars are super low and I’m eating all the sugar in the house).

The base of the cake is almond flour, which has 24g of carbs per cup and 12g of fiber per cup. The whole recipe has 48g of carbs. If you cut 12 slices, you are at 4g net carbs per slice! Really, I don’t think I could beat this if I tried.

Prep time: 5 min. Cook time: 50 min. Servings: 12 slices.

Ingredients

Cake

• 6 oz cream cheese
• 1/2 cup butter softened
• 3/4 cup sweetener (I used Swerve confectioners; if you use Truvia only use 1/2 cup)
• 4 eggs
• 6-8 drops lemon essential oil (I used orange when I was out of lemon & it was AMAZING)
• 2 cups almond flour finely ground 
• 1.5 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp sea salt

Glaze

• 3/4 cup powdered sweetener I used swerve confectioners 
• 1/2 lemon juiced
• Optional: If you want the glaze less lemony, add 1TBSP heavy cream, or other milk product.

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 350. Mix dry ingredients in a bowl: almond flour, baking powder & salt.
2. In a mixer mix the cream cheese, butter & sweetener. Add one egg at a time until mixed and scrape sides between adding eggs. Mix in lemon essential oil.

3. Add dry ingredients slowly to the mixer and mix.

4. Once mixed, line a pan with parchment paper. My loaf pan is 9" x 5" which makes a pretty tall loaf. I've split this into smaller pans too (just need less cook time).

5. Add batter to a baking pan lined with parchment paper and bake for 40-50 minutes. The middle needs to not be jiggly.

6. To mix the glaze, add confectioners sweetener and lemon juice to mixer and mix. Taste test to see if the lemon is too tart. If so add 1 TBSP heavy cream or other milk product.

7. Glaze the lemon loaf while hot and add lemon zest if you like.

Enjoy!

About Charlie Allred:

Charlie has lived with type 1 diabetes for 15 years. 

All of her tips & tricks have been learned through trial and error. She believes in a low carb life and cooks low carb for her whole family. Her goal is to keep her a1c near 6.0 to avoid diabetic complications. She is living her healthiest life and sees diabetes as a blessing to compel her to live her best life! She adds new recipes to her blog, healthydiabetic.us regularly. She wrote the book Blood Sugar Hacks to help people with diabetes lower their blood glucose level. She looks forward to you living your healthiest life!

Instagram: @healthydiabetic_tips

Join her facebook diabetic community:  https://www.facebook.com/groups/healthydiabetessupport/