Baking with Truvia?

October 31, 2009 12:05 PM

Has anyone had experience baking with Truvia, which is a granulated sweetener that looks and tastes like cane sugar but is made from stevia? I like it in iced tea and on plain yogurt and fruit, but I would like to use it in muffins and maybe cookies and don't know how it would work.
posted by Jenna Brown to Food & Drink (7 answers total)

I've no experience with the mass-marketed corporate version, but I do know from personal experience that you can bake with real Stevia.
posted by deadmessenger at 12:25 PM on October 31, 2009

I also have not idea about Truvia or whatever, but I bake and cook with stevia all the time. Works great.
posted by Lutoslawski at 12:25 PM on October 31, 2009

There's baking tips on the Truvia website. The pdf filed linked on the left of the page gives tips on how to use Truvia in baking. It can't be a straight sugar/Truvia swap because baking is chemistry and they are two different chemical components and so will not react the same.
posted by essexjan at 12:30 PM on October 31, 2009 [1 favorite]

While I was researching reducing the calories of a recipe, I found the LowCarbFriends Forums (recipe subforum). Lots of baking experimentation there, including this thread where they try to come up with a formula for replacing cane sugar with a mix of artificial sweeteners
posted by sharkfu at 3:42 PM on October 31, 2009

Best answer: I tried it. wasn't crazy about it. truvia's taste to me is good for fruits and acidic flavors, but just didn't have the right "warmth" for baked goods. worked out okay when I cut it with some brown sugar.
posted by patricking at 9:36 PM on October 31, 2009

patricking is on to something with the brown sugar. I sometimes use some maple syrup, molasses or honey to achieve a similar effect. Having a "softens" or "warms" the taste to make up for something in the artificial sweetener.
posted by 26.2 at 12:18 AM on November 1, 2009

Truvia is actually not just Stevia but mostly erythritol (which gives it most of its bulk) and stevia (which gives it most of its sweetness, since stevia is much sweeter than sugar or erythritol). This is a good thing, because it works much better in baked goods than Stevia alone as it has some of the bulking and caramelizing properties that Stevia does not have. I've never tried Truvia in baked stuff, but it works great for any place that you want sugar to caramelize, so there's reason to hope that it might work well for baked stuff too. Time to experiment!
posted by peacheater at 1:10 AM on November 1, 2009