Sweeteners
There's a lot of them out there, but I'm just going to discuss the ones I know about.
Xylitol has 2.4 calories per gram and ranks a 7 on the glycemic index. It looks and tastes like sugar and has a cooling effect in the mouth.
Splenda is the most popular of all among low carbers. It's made from sugar by chlorination. It comes in granular, packet and liquid form. The powdered forms have maltodextrin as a filler so it has carbs (24 per cup of granular). Liquid splenda, I've heard, has 0 because there are no fillers (I think it's diluted with water).
You measure the granular splenda like regular sugar. It works well with baking in bulk and texture. Meringues are an exception, however. I once tried making meringues with it and they came out horrible, they deflatted and tasted awful. I don't recommend using splenda for meringues.
Brown Sugar Twin is basically maltodextrin and saccharine. It has a nice smell and flavor like brown sugar. It seems rather strong in sweetness. I used it in a sugar free pumpkin pie and it worked well. I recently made a batch of chocolate chip cookies with it and they came out fabulous, they had that unique chocolate chip cookie taste. This is also measured like sugar and like splenda, works well with baking.
Stevia is the healthiest alternative sweetener. It has no calories and no impact on blood sugar. It works great in all beverages and in other things not requiring a bulk sweetener.
Erythritol is a sugar alcohol, although with some pleasant differences. It's 70% as sweet as sucrose, has the same bulk and appearance of sugar and has only .2 calories a gram making it the lowest calorie sugar alcohol of all. It causes no rise in insulin. Any site about it will tell you that it is highly unlikely to cause gastrointestinal disturbance, however, I believe I have experienced a little gasiness after eating a good deal of the stuff.
Erythritol worked in my cake but added a strange characteristic to my brownies. The brownies came out well in taste and I liked the texture although it was not like regular brownies, in other words they weren't chewy or bread like, they had a mild crispy texture, kind of reminded me of dry fudge. I know I used too much erythritol because they were a little too sweet. I've also used it in icecream and meringues. It worked well with both. Some of the erythritol did, however, melt and pool on the outside bottom edge of the meringues, but it wasn't a problem. Erythritol also works well for coatings, i.e., cinnamon and erythritol sprinkled on pork rinds or whatever. It has a nice mild sweet taste, no aftertaste unless you eat too much of it. I read on one of the low carb forums I go to about making caramel with erythritol, the trick was not heating it as long because it caramelizes faster than sugar or other sugar alcohols. I know it also makes good nut brittle.
Well that concludes this little report on sweeteners, hope it helped!
