Sweetener Shakedown (Plus Snickerdoodle Pancakes!)
The weather this week has been just right to swing by a cafe for an iced tea or iced coffee—or so the long lines streaming out onto the sidewalk tell me! I’m not a coffee drinker myself (and yes, I hear that I’m crazy often) but know that when you’re given your choice of powders to sweeten your drink, there are more than a few options.
So here are some fast facts about the usual suspects you may encounter beyond the typical cane sugar.
- Sugar in the Raw: Made from turbinado sugar grown in the tropics (about 20 calories per packet)
- Splenda: A mixture of maltodextrin and dextrose, which are corn derivatives that help the product sprinkle like sugar, along with sucralose (about 3 calories per packet)
- Equal: Aspartame, dextrose and maltodextrin (about 4 calories per packet)
- NuStevia: Stevia extract, a compound derived from the stevia plant, and maltodextrin (about 2 calories per packet)
- Sweet ‘N Low: Saccharin, blended with cream of tartar and dextrose (about 4 calories per packet)
For context, if you compared equal amounts of each, saccharin and aspartame are 200 times sweeter than sugar, stevia is 300 times sweeter and sucralose is 600 times sweeter than cane sugar. Those facts, and the ability to sprinkle/pour the powders, explain the other ingredients besides the sweeteners themselves.
Many of the sugar substitutes list zero calories on the nutrition panel, which the F.D.A. allows products with fewer than five calories to do since this value is basically inconsequential. It certainly is if you just use one packet, but I wanted to include the calorie estimations in case you add several to your beverage or bake with one of these sweeteners (warning: some sugar substitutes work better in baked goods than others).
So many options, right? The choice of sweetener is a personal one, so now that you have a quick primer on what’s included in each, it’s up to you!
The folks at NuNaturals hooked me up with a few of their latest stevia sweetener products, so I decided to take them for a spin with a recipe by the fabulous Chocolate Covered Katie. I have yet to discover my creative cooking gene. But that doesn’t mean I never fire up the stove…I just often rely on other people’s yummy recipes! And my oh my, Katie has some that look amazing. The first I took a stab at? Chocolate Covered Katie’s Snickerdoodle Pancakes. Pancakes that are flavored like cinnamon cookies? Yes, please.
A few notes based on the way I made the recipe my own:
- I opted for whole-wheat pastry flour in place of spelt flour
- For the non-dairy milk, I chose for Unsweetened Plain Almond Breeze (I bet the vanilla version would be delicious as well!)
- To sweeten the batter, I included packets of NuNaturals stevia sweetened the batter, although it could have used just a touch more
Nutrition Info (without toppings): approximately 250 calories, 2 g. fat
My food photography is nowhere near as mouthwatering as Katie’s, but the product still turned out plenty tasty. The stevia powder worked really well here as the sweetener—and tasted great—and I plan to try another batch using the liquid extract to compare the results. What a fun kitchen science experiment!
Do you develop your own recipes in the kitchen or mainly follow foolproof recipes from others?
