Keto Candy

Do you love candy but don’t want all the sugar? Then this recipe is for you! These sweet treats are the fastest way to beat a sweet tooth besides my other favorites like my microwave chocolate chip cookie or some almond joy bites.

You can create homemade keto candies that are sweet and delicious, but made with low carb ingredients instead of sugar. You can customize these treats to your taste preference by using different flavors and changing the length of cooking time to create different textures – like taffy, medium chews, hard chews or hard candy. This base recipe of just 3 ingredients will help you make any type of candy you crave. So go ahead, get creative in the kitchen and indulge!

Candy making at home doesn’t have to be complicated or involve fancy equipment like candy thermometers. In fact, you don’t even need a candy thermometer to make keto candy. Instead we go off of cooking time and appearance of our liquid candy mixture to achieve a particular type of candy.

1. Melt butter in a sauce pan over medium heat. Lower heat to low-medium.
2. Stir in sugar-free syrup, sweetener, salt and food coloring if using. Cook until boiling or bubbles start to form. At this stage, you have made a thick syrup. Remove from the heat now if you want to make caramel syrup or sauces for cheesecake or ice cream. Depending on the consistency of candy you are looking to create, cook for additional time.
3. Pour into candy molds or onto parchment paper and refrigerate until hardened.

Types of Keto Candy

• Soft Chew / Taffy: If you are making taffy or a soft chew, continue cooking past the initial boil phase until the mixture starts to get frothy and foamy. Let cook for an additional minute. Then remove from heat.
• Medium Chew / Caramels: To make a medium chew like a caramel candy, continue cooking past the initial boil phase until the mixture starts to get frothy and foamy. Let cook for an additional 2 minutes or just until the liquid candy has thickened and you can scrape a spoon on the bottom of the sauce pan and see the pan. Remove from the heat and quickly pour into molds.
• Hard Chew / Hi-Chew Candies: To make a hard chewy candy, cook past the initial boil phase and the frothy and foamy stage. Cook for additional 3 minutes or just the liquid is thick and if you lift your spoon out of the liquid candy it starts pull off in a ribbon.
• Hard Candy: To make hard candies like lollipops or suckers, cook past the above stages until large clear bubbles start to form. Remove from heat and quickly pour into molds.

Base Candy Ingredients

To make the base candy recipe, you need 3 ingredients, plus salt – which I figures most already have in their pantry.

• Butter: Adds fat and flavor to our candy recipes. This is a necessary ingredient in caramels and toffees. Make sure you use unsalted butter, especially since we are adding salt to the candy recipe.
• Sugar-Free Syrup: The only syrup that I use for making keto candy is by ChocZero. Their syrup is made from soluble corn fiber so it is sugar-free and sugar alcohol free. It is thick like maple syrup and comes in a variety of flavors. I mostly use Vanilla and Caramel in my recipes for candy. Their sugar-free syrups are an invaluable ingredient and can’t be substituted as it works like corn syrup to prevent the crystallization in sweet candy.
• Sweetener: Granulated sugar-free sweetener is added for sweetness. You can use a monkfruit blend sweetener or allulose in this recipe.
• Salt: Salt enhances the flavor and balances the sweetness of all types of candy. If making salt water taffy, we add just a pinch salt to achieve that sweet salty flavor.
• Flavoring: Any flavoring can be added to your candies. It’s best if using extracts to add them right after cooking but before pouring into the mold in order to preserve the flavor.