If one of your New Year's resolutions was to nix the processed white sugar from your diet, by now you've discovered that a wide and wily world of alternative natural sweeteners awaits. It's exciting, but it can also be pretty overwhelming. Take a look inside the pantry of someone who's already forged the path.
Sara Forte writes the venerable whole foods cooking blog Sprouted Kitchen and is the author of a forthcoming cookbook by the same name. She has put together not just a list of the sweeteners found on her shelves, but a description about what they are and how she uses each of them in her everyday cooking.
This is a practical and straightforward guide, which I appreciate. Most of the sweeteners that Sara covers can be found at any average grocery store (or barring that, Whole Foods) and then easily substituted in our favorite recipes. Because let's be real here: I can avoid processed sugar only so long as I can still have my chocolate chip cookies.
Head on over to Sprouted Kitchen to get the skinny on everything from organic cane sugar and muscavado to agave nectar and honey:
• Pantry Goods: Natural Sweeteners + Baked Apples from Sprouted Kitchen
Which natural sweeteners do you most commonly use?
Related: A Raw, Homemade Sweetener: Date Syrup
(Images: Muscavado Sugar/Dana Velden and Yacon Syrup/Emily Ho)
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I find it odd that they say that honey has a season and that it's freshest then. Yes, it is usually harvested in summer but honey does not go bad! It lasts forever!
If your honey turns solid and white, that's not from it going bad--it just needs to be heated up to melt the sugars.
Love the sugar in the raw. You can buy it in bulk. I've also recently discovered that if you boil a couple of dates, you get a sweet product. It's great for making oatmeal and you want that brown sugar taste.