Baking with sweeteners

Baking with sweeteners

Where in softdrinks, yoghurts, icecream, etc. it seems to be quite simple to just remove the sugar as their intention is only to sweeten the product. Adding a high intensity sweetener that can be from 30 times up to 800 times more sweet than sucrose or table sugar: it only has to be at a fraction dosed. Not all high intensity sweeteners are however coming from a natural source and can withstand heat. Acesulfame-K, Aspartame and Saccharin are known to be not bakestable at all, whereas neotame can withstand heat a bit more. So keeping sucralose, Stevia, Cyclamate, Monk fruit and some new plant based sweeteners as stable alternatives we could consider formulating with them. Legislation is however key here: in toppings and fillings they tend to be allowed, but in the EU the use was restricted to specific dietairy needs; now not allowing them to be used at all. Only in the home-baking market you can use them still.

However if we consider to remove 100 gram of sugar from a formulation and replace this with for example sucralose (expected intensity of 600 vs 1 of sugar) we would need for a similar sweetening

intensity 0.167 gram; leavening us to fill 99.833 gram to reach to this sugar reduction. With Stevia (assuming sweetening of 250) the dosage would be 0.4 gram, with 99.6 gram to fill up with a different ingredient (or bulking agent). As each sweetener tends to have some notes we don’t associated with sugar (such as liquorice for example) a flavouring where the flavour company actually uses those high intensity sweeteners as a flavour that ‘boosts’ sugar perception, as long as you don’t overdose.. seems to be a good alternative: they have already done some balancing so you can focus on texture, structure and shelf life with you bulk ingredients.

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