Question
Manisha Pathuri
Is there a way to use alternative sweeteners to cut down on sugar in desserts and cakes to make them suitable for individuals with diabetes?
Answer
So that's a question that I get pretty frequently, and I lived that question for a while because both of my stepsons from an early age were diagnosed with type one diabetes, and we decided-- I believe the Diabetic Association now is saying that a little bit of cane sugar is better than some of these other sweeteners, but you want to look into it. You want to look into it for yourself. Diabetes, a lot depends on what has happened before the dessert, what the meal was like, amount of fiber, and so on. I do want to look at some of these non-sugar sugars now. So this is xylitol, which is birch sugar. And this is one you want to absolutely keep away from your dogs because if it doesn't kill your dog, it will make them very, very, very sick. So birch sugar, this says, "Measures cup for cup, low glycemic, net carb zero, fights plaque, not for pets." It said that right on here. So they all have varying degrees of tastes in your mouth, either an aftertaste or a cooling effect on some of-- or digestive upsets. Now, this is ZyloSweet, which is the same thing except it's mixed with something else. Monk fruit really had a moment, but monk fruit is often mixed with something else. And monk fruit is-- the derivation of monk fruit before it is processed into monk fruit is a seed. People say it's a berry, but I know it's a seed that tastes, I don't know, like a bazillion times sweeter than sugar. However, the birds and the butterflies, whatever's flying around where it's grown, away, there is a very bitter coating, kind of like quinoa. And in order to process it to a point where it tastes just sweet and okay, there's so much processing in all of these, and that's something else that you want to consider. It's like, I would rather have a small piece of dessert that's made with a more natural, less processed sugar that I know where it comes from. I know cane, I know coconut, I know date, and so on, than something that is so highly processed, and they have been known to create stomach upsets. Now, Dr. Greger, and I'm going to guess that many of you know Dr. Greger, he was a fan for a number of years of erythritol, and he has taken that back and said no. There should be in here a link that Laura Hollenbeck, a double or triple Rouxbe grad and friend of mine, sent a link to me about brain health and not using, I think in this case it was erythritol. It might have been all of them. I think if we cut to the chase, what we could say is there's no free ride, so you make your choices. I want to show you a couple of liquid sweeteners. I'm saving this for last. This was amazing. So this is brown rice syrup, and I used a lot of brown rice syrup when I was starting out. I happen to love the flavor. To me, it tastes like caramel. And I use it, not for baking cakes because it will make a cake taste gummy, but it has a crisping in a cookie. We have a magnificent gluten-free, no refined sugar, free cookie that's a lace cookie that is made with maple syrup and rice syrup. The rice syrup provides the crispness. You can actually make a tuile out of that. This is coconut, pure coconut palm syrup. Personally, I don't care for the flavor, but there are people who like it. And then we have date syrup. This says date honey. Silan is what it's called in the Middle East, but it's date syrup and I love date syrup, and I often use this in place of molasses, and I use sorghum syrup in place of molasses. Sorghum is a cereal grass. I really like the flavor, and depending where the sorghum is grown, it has many different flavor profiles, so it's very interesting. And then this is agave, which got a bad rap for a number of years because it was found to be cut often with corn syrup And it's very sweet. It's very, very sweet. The agave plant, if it's processed in a different way, gives you tequila. So I make a vegan honey, or we make a vegan honey in the course, that is rice syrup and agave cooked with some other things, and it turns into a delicious honey. Now, I just got this as a sample. This could be a whole live event, and this is called Koji Agave. And koji is an enzyme. If anybody here has ever had amazake, which was very popular in the macrobiotic community, I used to love to make amazake puddings. It's a fermented, it can be a fermented grain, but often, or many different things. Most often, it's rice. And the koji, or the enzyme, it changes the carbohydrate that's naturally occurring into sugars or a perception of sweetness. And that's what they did here. So I went out to dinner with a couple of my gal pals here, Kathy Gold being one of them, and I see she's here today, and I asked for four spoons. Oh, Andrea Corby Vine, who's also a Rouxbe grad, was at the table. And we all tasted this because I didn't know what it tasted like. It's amazing. It has a round, buttery taste. It's wonderful. And then, this same company sent me a sample of their organic koji barista fermented rice beverage. Again, no idea what it would taste like, and so I tasted it, and wow. It's so sweet, but there's no added sugar. So this is something that's kind of coming back around again, using koji to break down products, make them taste sweeter without sweetness, if that makes any sense. Is there anything else I haven't shown you? There is barley malt, is another liquid sweetener. Now, are all the liquid sweeteners interchangeable? No, they are not, because they have different properties. What you want to do, for starters, is taste them. Barley malt is very strong, like a molasses. And rice syrup, as I said, works for some products, some baked goods, not for everything. And date syrup, I think it's fabulous, but I'm not baking with it. So when you're using liquid sweeteners, I use them as a percentage of the sweetener in my cake. Makes the cake very moist. Very moist. Moist is good, right? Who wants a dry cake? And it has a good keeping quality, but too much, you get mush. So there is that fine line, and you want it to be appropriate to what you're making.
