Being on a ketogenic diet can have its downfalls at times. Not being able to eat our favorite foods, our comfort foods, or the sweets we may crave. It takes willpower, but there’s always a way to get around it. Adapting and experimenting always yields results in the kitchen, and this time I’m aiming for a low carb grilled ham and cheese.
Don’t you miss it? The first bite you take out of that crisp bread and you can actually hear the crunch of the top and bottom layers cracking beneath the force of your teeth. Followed by the rich ham and the gooey cheese coating your taste buds. I surely do, and I was willing to try anything to recreate it.
I just recently got a new set of bake-ware and it’s been treating me wonderfully. My last bake set was pretty old, I’d say around 5 years old. Random burnt food caked on, impossible to remove, and what seemed like rust stains crawling up each and every crevice.
Oh, the nonstick surface? Ha, that’s laughable. I never realized how practical non-stick was until I purchased my new bake-ware set.
Baking cookies, cupcakes, bread, muffins and the like has become 100 times easier because everything just slides right out of the trays! My recent switch from Bob’s Red Mill Almond Flour to Honeyville Blanched Almond Flour was also a fantastic decision.
The cookies, cakes, and breads come out much more “realistic” when you compare them to the non-keto versions. The grainy faux breads that Bob’s Red Mill produces is bearable, but why not aim for better?
Keep in mind, these are best served hot and are perfect for an easy keto lunch recipe. You can do 90% of the prep work beforehand, and just fry them up when you’re ready to eat.
Recipe yields 8 total miniature low carb buns and 3 total mini grilled ham & cheese.
The Preparation
Low-Carb Mini Buns:
- 3/4 cup almond flour
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1 1/2 tablespoons butter, salted
- 2 tablespoons coconut oil
- 2 large egg
- 1 teaspoon coconut flour
Grilled Ham & Cheese:
- 3 slices ruled.me mini buns
- 1.2 ounces ham
- 2 ounces cheddar cheese, sliced
- 2 ounces muenster cheese, sliced
- 1 tablespoon butter, salted
The Execution
Bread
1. Preheat your oven to 350F.
2. Measure out your almond flour, salt, and baking powder into a small mixing bowl. Mix it well.
3. Measure out 1 1/2 Tbsp. Butter and 2 Tbsp. Coconut Oil into a microwave safe container.
4. Microwave the butter and coconut oil for 20 seconds to get it melted. Add it to the almond flour mixture.
5. Mix the flour and butter mixture together. You should have something that resembled dough.
6. Crack your 2 eggs and scramble them until combined.
7. Add your eggs to the almond flour dough and mix well.
8. Add your 1 tsp. coconut flour and mix well, this should thicken up the mixture.
9. Measure your mixture out evenly between 8 slots in a cupcake tray. They should not fill up the tray very much, about 3/4 of an inch.
10. Put them in the oven for 18-20 minutes, depending on your oven. Once they become golden brown on the edges, you can remove them.
11. Allow them to cool for 10-15 minutes and remove them from the cupcake holes.
Grilled Ham & Cheese
1. Use a sharp bread knife to carefully cut the bread into halves.
2. In a hot pan, place your slices of deli meat. I ripped them up into halves. You just need to crisp them up so it doesn’t matter what shape they’re in. We can fix them later.
3. When they get crispy, remove them from the pan.
4. Stack your cheese up, 1 slice of muenster, 1 slice of cheddar, 1 slice of muenster, and 1 slice of cheddar. Cut this up into quarters.
5. Put the ham and cheese in between your low carb buns.
6. In a pan, start to get butter heated up on medium high heat.
7. When the butter is starting to turn brown, turn your heat down to medium-low. Add your cheese & ham sandwiches.
8. If you have a weight, you can use it. I’m old fashioned so I put a plate on top and put my coconut oil container on top of that.
9. Once you start to smell the bread slightly burning, it’s time to flip them over.
10. Let them cook for a few more minutes allowing the top to get crisp.
11. Remove them from the pan and enjoy!
This makes a total of 8 servings of Keto Bites: Grilled Ham & Cheese. Each serving comes out to be 202 calories, 18.1g fats, 1.7g net carbs, and 7.9g protein.
| NUTRITION | CALORIES | FAT | CARBS | FIBER | NET CARBS | PROTEIN |
| 3/4 cup almond flour | 486 | 42 | 18.5 | 10.9 | 7.6 | 17.6 |
| 1/4 teaspoon salt | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 1 teaspoon baking powder | 2 | 0 | 1.3 | 0 | 1.3 | 0 |
| 1 1/2 tablespoon butter | 153 | 17.3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.2 |
| 2 tablespoon coconut oil | 243 | 27 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2 large egg | 157 | 10.5 | 0.8 | 0 | 0.8 | 13.8 |
| 1 teaspoon coconut flour | 7 | 0.4 | 1.1 | 0.8 | 0.3 | 0.3 |
| 3 slice ruled.me mini buns | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 1.2 ounce ham | 43 | 1.5 | 1.2 | 0 | 1.2 | 6.1 |
| 2 ounce cheddar cheese | 229 | 18.9 | 1.8 | 0 | 1.8 | 13 |
| 2 ounce muenster cheese | 209 | 17 | 0.6 | 0 | 0.6 | 13.3 |
| 1 tablespoon butter | 102 | 11.5 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.1 |
| Totals | 1630 | 146.1 | 25.3 | 11.7 | 13.6 | 64.4 |
| Per Serving (/8) | 204 | 18.3 | 3.2 | 1.5 | 1.7 | 8.1 |
Keto Bites: Grilled Ham & Cheese
Ingredients
Low-Carb Mini Buns:
- ¾ cup almond flour
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1 ½ tablespoon butter salted
- 2 tablespoon coconut oil
- 2 large egg
- 1 teaspoon coconut flour
Grilled Ham & Cheese:
- 3 slice ruled.me mini buns
- 1.2 ounce ham
- 2 ounce cheddar cheese sliced
- 2 ounce muenster cheese sliced
- 1 tablespoon butter salted
Instructions
- Measure out your almond flour, salt, and baking powder into a small mixing bowl. Mix it well.
- Measure out butter and coconut oil into a microwave-safe container. Microwave the butter and coconut oil for 20 seconds to get it melted. Add it to the almond flour mixture. Mix the flour and butter mixture together. You should have something that resembles dough.
- Add your eggs to the almond flour dough and mix well.
- Add coconut flour and mix well, this should thicken up the mixture.
- Fill up the wells of a cupcake tray, about 3/4 of an inch per well.
- Put them in the oven for 18-20 minutes, depending on your oven. Once they become golden brown on the edges, you can remove them from the oven.
- Allow them to cool for 10-15 minutes and remove them from the cupcake holes. Use a sharp bread knife to carefully cut the bread into halves horizontally.
- In a hot pan, place your slices of deli meat. I ripped them up into halves. You just need to crisp them up so it doesn’t matter what shape they’re in. We can fix them later.
- When they get crispy, remove them from the pan.
- Stack your cheese up. Cut the stack into quarters.
- Put the ham and cheese in between your low carb buns.
- In a pan, start heating butter on medium-high heat. When the butter is starting to turn brown, turn your heat down to medium-low. Add your ham & cheese sandwiches.
- If you have a weight, you can use it. I’m old-fashioned, so I put a plate on top and put my coconut oil on top of that. Once you start to smell the bread slightly burning, it’s time to flip them over. Let them cook for a few more minutes allowing the top to get crisp.
- Remove them from the pan and enjoy!
can you imagine how tasty this would be with an over easy egg or even with a bacon weave ? gonna cook this up for my weekend breakfast. awesome recipe
For times sake I didn’t want to cook a bacon weave but that would be awesome. They’re pretty small so you’ll have to cut up the bacon weave relatively creatively to get it looking good. Take a picture and post it here if you want – I’d love to see it!
Haaaay Craig…any suggestions on what I can do to omit the coconut flour? Replacements/substitutions?
Hey Tif,
Just reduce the liquids a tiny bit and omit the coconut flour – should turn out very similar 🙂
You’re awesome, thanks.
Awww, you too!
how long can you store the bread/muffins once you make them? in the fridge or freezer too?
I store them for a week, but no more than that. I have never really frozen them, but I heard from others that they do fine in the freezer. I’d imagine they get kind of hard, though (even after defrosting).
can u just sub flaxmeal for everything? cause i dont have almond nor coconut flour here
Roy,
You can’t really, no. Flax meal has different absorptive qualities than both almond and coconut flour. If you want to use all flaxseed meal, you will need to add less liquids (slowly add and mix them until the right consistency). It may not taste that great though, as flax is a quite heavy taste. Hope that helps!
Oh My Good God Above, you sold me! Grilled Ham n Cheese & Tomato Soup! My Go To Comfort all year round! I was GONNA make the Dirty Blondie Pancakes for supper, but this has flat changed my mind. BTW, I am a new liker, discovered you via my own blog page on fb, because I follow I Breathe I’m Hungry. I am sooo glad I hopped over there this morning! WHAT a blessing! Now I have all the brekky variety I crave!
Oof! I made these a long time ago but I still remember how great they were. Those mini buns definitely do well in the butter 🙂 Really glad you found the site too! I’m sure we’ll be seeing more and more of each other 😛
ANOTHER WINNER! This is the second recipe I tried from you site. This was delish. I took your advise and ordered Honeyville almond flour, another great choice. Ive tried other brands this by far is the best. What to try next….
Woo! Glad to hear you got the Honeyville, it really is much better than any other almond flour/almond meal I’ve tried 🙂
This recipe sounded really tasty so I decided to give it a try. Followed the instructions closely, however the muffins turned really bitter. Do you think i maybe put too much baking soda?
Ina, they might have been bitter since you used baking soda? The recipe calls for baking powder – 2 different things.
Haha, I guess i didn’t follow it THAT closely. Thanks for the comment. I am going to try it again right now!
Hope they turn out better this time 😉
I followed the recipe to make the bun, and instead of using ham & cheese I used two breakfast sausage rounds and cheese!
Really good idea – they look better than mine. Thanks so much for giving such great feedback on all the recipes you’ve done 🙂
I found your site yesterday while doing a search and downloaded 30 day meal plan today. I am looking at the recipes on your site and I love the fact that you show pictures of how to prepare your recipes. It makes me more willing to try making them when I know how it should look. I am planning on switching out one meal at a time to give me time to get use to eating this way. As a type 2 diabetic, I have learned not to do drastic changes too quickly or I won’t stick to it.
Glad to hear it Tina. I hope to see your blood sugars coming down in the next few weeks!
I made just the buns. I didn’t have a muffin pan with smaller molds equaling to 12 muffins. I had a 6-muffin pan that were larger molds, so I distributed it evenly into 6 muffins. Done this way, they were done in about 12-13 minutes versus the 18+ you had listed.
Also, My experience with almond flour (honeyville) and coconut flour has always been a trial and error with recipes. The problem is that the amount made with measuring cups or spoons always is more than what I mass according to the servings on the nutrition labels. For this recipe I went ahead and just used measuring cups and spoons for my first try. They turned out well. Thanks for a lovely recipe.
P.S. I also want to mention it toasted very well. Toasting on the light setting is enough to crisp it because of all the fat content.
Made these. Followed recipe to a T. They were heavenly. I cried mine in salted butter. Mmmmmm ooey gooey cheesy heaven! Thabk you for sharing.
A couple quick questions.
The printable recipe doesn’t have the ingredients for the buns. Is that intentional? Can it be added?
Second.
Can this recipe be played with to make it a sweet roll? Maybe add xylitol, vanilla and almond extract? A few nuts or Lily’s chocolate bits? Or some pumpkin spice seasoning and sweetener?
Will it change the consistency too much? Has anyone done this?
Thank you for this recipe! I started Keto last week and went from 117 to 108 in 7 days. Admittedly, I’ve been ridiculously hungry at times. Changed my macros last night so I could maintain status quo and was able to indulge in two of these beauties. One note, I accidentally added 1 TBSP of coconut flour instead of 1 TSP. They came out great with only a slight hint of coconut. I can’t wait to make these again tomorrow!
Haven’t made the Ham and Cheese part of this, but I did make the bread to use with BBQ Pulled Chicken. Either I’m using GIANT muffin tins or these measurements were only big enough to put in 6 tins. I only have a 6 tin, but if it was an 8, it would have made 8 slices, not 8 sets.
The bread that comes out, is STILL great, just the sizing is a little off. Comes out to be about the size of a McMuffin.
Again, GREAT recipe, but just giving a heads up if planning a night
Thank you Patrick!
Can these be frozen or kept in the fridge?
I’ve kept these in the fridge for up to a week. I haven’t tried freezing them but I think it would work fine.
Can there be a substitution for ham? I hate ham so maybe deli sliced chicken or turkey?
Yeah, that would be a great switch!
Curious if anyone has tried the bread recipe in a small loaf pan?
I love these, but I didn’t care for the coconut flavor. Do you think it would work if I substituted something like extra butter or olive oil?
Definitely – either of those would work!