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Natural SweetenersRefined white sugar is so commonly used these days, I think as a culture we have forgotten there are other delicious sweeteners. Now that I've tasted and learned how to use some of these more natural sweeteners, I actually prefer their taste to sugar. Some of these you'll find in natural food stores, others you'll have to order online. They are worth exploring--for the pleasure of your tastebuds, and the health of your body and the enviornment.
Free natural sweetener recipes
and newsletter Since making a personal decision to not eat refined or artificial sweeteners because of their health effects, I've been experimenting with all the natural sweeteners, to make popular desserts. These recipes are truly delicious. Many of my taste testers say they can't tell there is not white sugar in them. I'm working out the fine points of using all these sweeteners and publishing my results weekly in my Natural Sweetener Recipes email newsletter. Check out the list of recipes and subscribe today by entering your email address in the newsletter sign-up box to the left.
General
Many varieties of honey, maple syrup, stevia, molasses, evaporated cane juice, brown rice syrup, barley malt syrup.
You'll find some unusual sweeteners here as well as the standard ones. Her dry sweeteners include barley malt powder, honey crystals, and molasses crystals in addition to evaporated cane juice and powdered sugar, date sugar, maple sugar, fructose and dextrose. Liquid sweeteners include including agave syrup, molasses, barley malt syrup, brown rice syrup, and sorghum syrup.
Organic barley malt and brown rice syrups, plus powdered brown rice syrup and hard candies in many flavors made with brown rice syrup.
Honey, date sugar, maple syrup, and granulated maple syrup.
Fruit-sweetened fruit spread, syrup and pie filling made with organic Maine blueberries.
 Organic maple syrup, maple syrup crystals, brown rice syrup and powder, barley malt syrup, fruit-sweetened fruit spreads, and...organic apple butter made with nothing but organic apples.
Organic molasses, maple granules, raw sugar, barley malt extract powder, cane sugar granules, brown rice syrup, agave syrup, date sugar.
A unique collection of organic natural sweeteners and sweet products made from them: marshmallow creme made from rice syrup (contains soy), a blend of rice syrup and other natural sweeteners that tastes "Just-Like-Honey", fruit spreads sweetened with rice syrup, light and dark "rice nectar" and nectars flavored with fruits, maple or chocolate. Plus organic agave syrup, wildflower honey, barley malt syrup, and blackstrap molasses.
Agave Nectar
"The only Blue Agave sold in the United States that doesn't contain any unnatural fillers." Organic, raw, certified low glycemic. Also sells DVD with over 300 agave recipes.
Apple Syrup
This is a great apple farm, where my husband and I used to stop when we would drive from San Francisco to Mendocino, California. They grow about 100 varieties of apples, and we would stop to try the different kinds that had just been picked. Their apple cider syrup is "the result of many years of experiments with the goal of eventually being able to process all of the fruit that is not table quality. We are very close to our goal and feel we have come up with some exceptional apple products...We have been members of CCOF (California Certified Organic Farmers) for many years but have found ourselves veering off towards an even deeper commitment. The idea of looking at the farm as a complete organism is central to the practice of Biodynamics, which we began practicing in earnest several years ago. We are proud to have achieved Demeter status this year, making it possible to represent our farm and our apple products as biodynamic."
Barley Malt Syrup
Made from certified organic barley.
Organic barley malt syrup. Sold online and in natural food stores.
Birch Syrup
Syrups, sauces, and confections made from birch syrup. Similar to maple syrup, birch syrup is "rich and spicy sweet, with a wonderful caramel-like flavor...produced on our homestead in Alaska's Susitna Valley, the vast river valley of the Alaska Range. Each spring we collect the sap from the paper birch and evaporate it to syrup in much the same way pure maple syrup is produced. It takes approximately 100 gallons of sap to produce 1 gallon of birch syrup; maple by comparison is approximately 40:1."
Brown Rice Syrup
Organic brown rice syrup and powdered brown rice syrup. Syrup sold in most natural food stores; order powdered syrup online.
Brown rice syrup made by the leading organic rice famers. Their website describes their growing practice in detail. Purchase online or at most natural food stores.
Dates and Date Sugar
Fruit Spreads
"America's #1 domestic gourmet preserves, has offered premium quality fruit spreads and delicacies since 1897." Their Purely Fruit line is sweetened with blended fruit syrups; their organic fruit spreads contain sugar.
100% natural fruit spread sweetened only with fruit and fruit juice. All the standard flavors. Sold in most supermarkets (on-line by the case).
Over a dozen flavors of fruit spreads sweetened with "fruit syrup". Smucker's customer service department says this syrup is made from pineapple, apple, or pear juice, or some combination of the three. Available in most supermarkets and on their website.
"Gifts of nature elevated by French chefs into all natural 'Rhapsodie de Fruits'...St. Dalfour 'Rhapsodie de Fruits' are made in the heart of the French countryside to an old recipe from the Loire Valley. They are pure fruit. No sugar is added. Only the natural sweetness of concentrated grape juice is used. This natural sweetness produces a taste which is much fresher and more delicious than the heavy taste of sugar." Standard flavors plus exotics, including 4 Citrus Fruits, Fig Royal, Kumquat, Mirabelle Plum, Orange & Ginger, and Pineapple & Mango. Website does not sell the product, but it is sold in many natural food stores and can be ordered online through ShopNatural (type "St. Dalfour" in site search box).
"Jam-packed with high quality fruit. Loaded with goodness. Alive with flavor...Sweetened with fruit juice concentrates only." Standard flavors.
Honey
"Totally unprocessed honey...still contains pollen, propolis, honeycomb and live enzymes--all the goodness the bees put in...gathered from fields of wildflowers planted by nature, without pesticides or fertilizers." This is the honey I use for my "everyday" honey. It's smooth and creamy and has "cappings" on the top--"crunchy bits of pollen, propolis, and capping wax...[they] have the highest concentrations of pollen and propolis, which are known for their healthful properties."
Raw honey from "high in Colorado's Rocky Mountains. There in the unspoiled high country, for a mere 80 days, the bees have the joyous opportunity to forage on over 30 varieties of lush, alpine wildflowers." Read the description of their process. It's wonderful.
Maple Syrup
Maple syrup and maple butter "produced and packaged in Vermont by certified organic farms".
A small mother and daughter sugaring operation that makes only 70 gallons of high quality maple syrup a year with their own hands, plus maple candy, maply sugar, and maple cream. "When spring's freezing nights and warm days cause the sap to run, we tap our trees, gather the sap and boil it down in our sugarhouse to make pure maple syrup - absolutely nothing is added. My daughter and I work together in the woods maintaining our sap lines as well as spend many hours together boiling in the sugarhouse."
Organic grade A & B maple syrup, candy, cream & granules. Purchase at natural food stores or online.
Certfied organic maple syrup, maple candy, maple sugar, and maple cream from Maine.
Oligofructose
Sells "Sweet Perfection" Oligofructose, which is simply finely ground chicory root. 3 carbs per teaspoon and 3 grams of dietary fiber, so the net carbs are zero and the glycemic index is zero. The label claims it is safe for diabetics and will not cause insulin surges. This website also sells chocolate bars sweetened with this sweetener.
Stevia Leaf
Live stevia plants you can grow yourself, plus stevia extract powder from their plants, and certified organic whole and cut stevia leaves and stevia leaf powder."These new Stevia plants are the result of 8 years cross pollination and selection to produce a crop with very low Stevioside content and a very high Rebaudioside A content...Thus we have eliminated the bitterness or after taste as well as improving the sweetness. Super Sweet Stevia has a cleaner sweetness." The website doesn't say that the plants are organic, but here is what the owner had to say about his growing practices in an email to me: "Our Stevia plants can not be considered "certified organic" because we use chemical fertilizers on them. The Stevia plants in our plant production cycle never get planted in the ground. They are grown in pots on elevated benches outside during the summer and brought into the greenhouse for the winter. Outdoors they are not bothered by insects so we have no need to spray. However indoors, during the winter, white fly is a problem and we do spray with "Pyreth-It". This pesticide is made from the Pyrethrum Daisy and is approver for use on organic crops. We use Pyreth-It only as needed as our first line of defense is Lady Bugs and other beneficials that we have been selling for years. At no time would I ever stop one of my grand kids from going out to the greenhouse and eating a leaf from the Stevia plants. Of course they have been tough to watch out for Lady Bugs and not eat them."
Sells Stevita and SweetLeaf stevia products, plus books on stevia and stevia cookbooks. Be sure to click through to their recipes section, which has lots of background information on stevia.
Organically grown stevia powder with 96% steviosides, minimum 30% rebaudiosides, blended with erythritol, This extract is blended with erythritol, a natural, sweet, granulated filler from fruits and vegetables. The stevia plants are grown on their own farms and they use a patented water and filtration method to extract the steviosides from the leaves. No bleaching agents, alcohol or chemicals. No bitter aftertaste.
Standardized for 95% Rebaudioside-A for maximum sweetness and to eliminate bitterness, If you have tried Stevia before and didn't like it, you might like this.
SweetLeaf® Stevia Extract is at least 90 percent stevioside, of that 40% is rebaudioside. Available in extract powder, leaf powder, liquid, and tablets. Extracted with an alcohol process.
Unrefined Cane Sugar
Organically grown, whole, unrefined cane sugar harvested from sustainable family farms in Bolivia and through the Hand in Hand™ fair trade program. It has a unique caramel flavor and fine grain texture. It is closest to the natural whole cane because the molasses is not separated out during the squeeze-dried processing.
"The juice is pressed from sun-ripened sugarcane, washed, filtered and crystallized-all right on the farm" on the day of harvest. This is evaporated cane juice with the molasses removed, so it tastes almost like white sugar, but is less processed. They also have conventionally-grown sugars that are naturally milled--their natural demarara sugar has a bit of molasses added. Click on "Our Products/Inside our Natural Mill" to see how their sugars are processed and on "Our Environment" to learn how the company utilizes sustainable agriculture and is part of a program to protect the Florida Everglades.
Organic sweetened condensed milk. The ingredients say only that it is sweetened with "organic cane sugar", but on the phone they told me that it is unrefined evaporated cane juice.
"100% pure Hawaiian cane sugar from the initial pressing of the cane, allowing the natural molasses to remain in the crystals...Juice is extracted from the sugar cane, and then crystallized through evaporation. These crystals are rinsed with a very small amount of water to remove just enough stickiness to make the product free flowing...The flavor is sweet and rich. The color is natural amber...Some commercial brown sugars are made by adding coloring and flavor back to refined white sugar; this is not the case with Sugar In The Raw." I called the company to clarify the point about the molasses. Sugar in the Raw is never refined to the point of white sugar. The sugar is crystallized, and the crystals are removed from the molasses and rinsed. So the crystals still contain some, but not all of the molasses.
Every cottage had it's kitchen garden, every state it's fields and dairies. Better-off families kept their own beehives, and in the honeys you could taste the wildflowers and gardens of England.
--Phillip Williamson For more quotes like this, sign up for daily delivery of my free Words of Wisdom newsletter.
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