Mix, heat, analyse… there is less difference between science and cooking than one might assume. Good recipes often need several trials – like good results in research.
cooking with stevia -the recipes
Not only the laboratory, but also the school kitchen and many private kitchens in the student flats and parents’ homes were turned into locations for our meticulous work.
Once our curiosity for Stevia had been excited, it was just a small step from the laboratory to the kitchen.
In numerous recipes we tried to substitute Stevia for sugar and to attain the best taste through the combination of both ingredients.
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Obviously, few trials ran all that smooth. Once we underestimated the strength of Stevia and another time we added too little of it.
One big disadvantage of using Stevia is that the substitution for sugar leads to a loss in mass and a loss of other textural qualities of commercial sugar. Stevia tends to make cakes drier than usual. One should try to use juicy ingredients.
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She has already met the challenge in the laboratory
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Another issue is that Stevia has quite a peculiar taste, which is difficult to describe.
Since tastes differ, there were some who rated Stevia as ”very agreeable“ and others thought it tasted “quite disturbing”.
In depends on the recipe how much it tastes of Stevia. We noticed that milk shakes with Stevia tasted a lot “fresher”. When we used a lot of stevioside we noticed a slightly bitter taste. This bitterness could be neutralized quite satisfactorily by adding milk.
We could not taste any unfavourable changes in most of the dishes sweetened with Stevia. Our conclusion:
Stevia is more or less an unobtrusive alternative to sugar as the difference can usually only be tasted when compared directly.
I we all had a lot of fun when trying to tackle these initial difficulties.
All the cooking and tasting was great, and a welcome change to our boarding at school. Not only the participating pupils, but also many teachers, other students and tutors were able to enjoy our delicacies. |
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Calorie-free and healthy with Stevia
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During the course of our culinary experiments, we had the idea to create something extraordinary, something extravagant – a real highlight for our taste buds… What could possibly be more delicious and challenging than making real chocolate candies?
We decided to contact a real “chocolatier“ to help us put our plan into action.
We fixed a date and some of us went to Upper Austria, to be more precise, to Allhaming near Wels. There we met Helmut Wenschitz, whose latest discovery, a chocolate named ”Grand Cru“, was chosen “Best Chocolate in the World“ in 2005.
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Helmut Wenschitz only manufactures chocolates without preserving agents and uses rare and intense coca beans for his products.
Equipped with a small sample of Stevia we were hoping to exchange some ideas. However, we soon had to realize that most chocolatiers, including Mr Wenschitz, purchased their chocolate from companies that manufacture some kind of basic chocolate mix which, to our great dissatisfaction, already contains sugar. We were lacking the equipment, the experience and know-how to produce our own basic chocolate mass.
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… or mix things in the kitchen, the secret lies in the proportions.
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It seemed impossible to create sugar-free chocolate, even though the perfect substitute for sugar was at hand.
We were already abandoning all hope that we could produce our sugar-free, low-calorie and caries-impeding candy, when Mr Wenschitz came up with a solution to all our problems.
The product line of the confiserie Wenschitz included chocolates for diabetics which were, of course, without any sugar.
Finally we had found the key to success and could produce our sugar-free candy with Stevia
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