Cooking With Stevia
Posted on September 1, 2007 under Cooking
There’s no real magic to replacing standard table sugar with stevia in your cooking recipes. It requires a little bit of know-how, but once you get the hang of it, you’ll find it’s actually quite easy to cook with stevia in all your favorite recipes. Plus, the added benefit of reducing or cutting sugar and other chemical sweeteners (such as aspartame) from your diet makes this new-found education worth it.
The best tip we can give is that less stevia is more. It’s a little like vanilla and other extracts - it’s all too easy to use too much stevia. At first, we recommend using a little less than the recipe calls for and adding more as necessary to taste. Stevia is perfect in produce and milk/dairy recipes, but the downside for baking is that it does not offer the same properties of sugar, such as helping to soften batter, caremlize, etc. Stevia’s sweetness is however unaffected by the baking/cooking process.
By now, you’re asking, “How do I know how much stevia to use? How much is too much?” It’s difficult to provide a definitive answer. Sour or tart fruits, such as cherries or lemons, require more stevia than a comparable dessert baked using apples for example. Your own personal taste plays a role as well, as it does with other non-stevia recipes.
There are also a number of stevia manufacturers whose properties vary from one product to another. We recommend taste-testing several available stevia brands and choosing the one that’s right for your personal taste and your cooking style. It’s important to note that some manufacturers use additives such as maltodextrin or other chemicals in their stevia. It is Stevia Cafe’s opinion that such products are inferior and not recommended.
Stevia Cooking Tips
- Try using maple syrup or honey, mixed with stevia, in your recipes. This is a great way to take “baby steps” while getting used to cooking with stevia.
- Most stevia recipes require stevia powder or the liquid extract/concentrate form of stevia derived from powder.
- When using stevia in beverage recipes, bear in mind that such powders and/or leaves will not dissolve easily. Stevia concentrate is more suitable for such recipes.
Stevia / Sugar Conversion Chart
Keep in mind that these numbers are only approximate. As previously mentioned it is difficult to provide exact conversion values for stevia and sugar due to differences in personal taste, manufacturing processes, etc.
Using small amounts of stevia powder can be the most difficult to get just right. The best example of this is when adding stevia to beverages such as coffee or tea. A tiny, pin-head sized amount may be too much for some folks. One option is to dissolve a single tsp. of stevia powder in three tbsp’s of water. You can store this solution in a dropper in your refrigerator. A better option is to simply purchase stevia liquid from your local health store or save even more by shopping our stevia store.
| Sugar | Stevia Powder/Extract | Stevia Liquid/Concentrate |
|---|---|---|
| 1 cup | 1 tsp. | 1 tsp. |
| 1 tbsp. | 1/4 tsp. | 6 - 9 drops |
| 1 tsp. | 1 pinch | 2 - 4 drops |
Stevia Nutrition Information
| Per 2 Teaspoons of Sugar | Natural or Artificial? | Calories | Net Carbs | Glycemic Index |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stevia | Natural | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Sugar | Natural | 32 | 8g | 70 |
| Nutrasweet (Aspartame) | Artificial | 0 | 1g | 0 |
| Splenda (Sucralose) | Artificial | 0 | 1g | 0 |
| Sweet’N Low (Saccharin) | Artifical | 0 | 1g | 0 |
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