stevia = swiss cheese muffins

I finally made some muffins last night using Stevia. Hildegard brought over a bottle of bulk NuNaturals Stevia diluted with Maltodextrin. I didn’t have a handle on how much to use because of the Maltodextrin, so I tried it out first sprinkled over a bowl of puffed Millet. It does taste sweet, but not so sweet that I will need to be afraid of using too much. It also has some licorice-like aftertaste. Looking at the structure, I don’t think this comes from the steviosides, so another source of purified steviosides may be aftertaste-free, but this is pure speculation on my part.

I used my standard muffin recipe with 1 cup chopped frozen apricots. After mixing it with 2 tsp Stevia powder, it looked a little wet. I added 2 Tbsp flour mix to compensate for the missing volume of sugar.

They rose quite a lot, and browned nicely. Cutting one open revealed a texture similar to swiss cheese -- Big bubble holes unevenly distributed, and a hard crust. Actually, they are more bread-like in texture than some bread I have made. This bears more investigation later, I think.

It turns out that they aren’t sweet enough for my taste, but Hildegard might like them. She says that she likes things not so sweet. For me, I can still taste the baking soda, so I say make them sweeter. The licorice aftertaste is faintly noticable. I like licorice though…

1 ½ c (9:2 Sorghum flour/Potato Starch)

¼ c Soy flour

2 tsp NuNaturals Stevia powder + 2 Tbsp flour mix

2 ½ tsp Baking Powder

¾ tsp salt

½ tsp Xanthan gum

2 eggs

1 c milk or soy milk

1/3 c vegetable oil

2 tsp vanilla extract

1 c chopped apricots

I think that flour isn’t the right volume subsitute to use. Karina suggested chopped coconut, but sugar dissolves, so I was thinking something less solid. I think that next time I will try some tapioca starch. I think that this will help them be more chewy and less crusty. Hopefully, the longer chain starch in the tapioca will also contribute to holding the developing gases from collecting in large pockets as they rise in the oven. I’ll let you know when I get time for a re-trial.