These are great for Christmas or Chanukah because the stevia herb and chopped, dried cranberries or goji berries give them a festive look.  Don’t be surprised when the kids get the burst of energy and good feeling that doesn’t crash so hard because they’re getting grains the way they should be: fermented.

You will need:

• 1 tablespoon crushed or ground stevia herb, steeped in 1/2 cup of hot water, covered and allowed to cool
• Ghee, lard, vegetable ghee (unhydrogenated palm oil), virgin coconut oil, or extra virgin olive oil a centimeter or two deep in your pan, plus a tablespoon for the dough
• 3 cups white flour or substitute 1 cup of it for whole wheat, rye, or oat flour
• 2 tablespoons tahini (the base, not prepared) or unsweetened organic peanut butter with the full fat
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon citric acid or cream of tartar
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon allspice
• 3 eggs
• 1 cup full fat (15-23%) sour cream or a good, thick, full fat goat yogurt
• 1/2 cup chopped goji berries or dried cranberries, soaked in hot water and then drained  (you can use chopped raisins or dates if you like)

Instructions:

1. The afternoon before you want to make your sopapillas, prepare your stevia herb “tea”.
2. The night before, make the batter.  It needs to sit overnight in the refrigerator to ferment and allow the sweetness to fully “blossom”.
3. Mix the dry ingredients into a large bowl.
4. Cut in the oil and tahini until it looks like a crumbly, coarse meal.
5. In a separate bowl, beat the eggs and stevia “tea” together.
6. Then stir the sour cream in well.
7. Combine the wet and dry ingredients by stirring them in slowly.  This will gradually take a bit of effort.
8. If you do not yet have a thick but wet dough, add a bit more cold water until you do.  You want it droppable with a spoon, but not like pancake batter.  Do not overmix.  There should be a few small lumps here and there.
9. Fold in the berries.
10. Transfer the dough to a container, and cover it.  Let this set overnight in the refrigerator.
11. The next day, take out the dough and let it come to room temperature.
12. Heat your oil.  It should be hot but not smoking.
13. Using a soup spoon, dip  out a heaping half tablespoon of dough at a time, and drop them gently into the oil.
14. Fry until golden brown, and then turn over to fry the other side.
15. As they are done, transfer them to a plate or bowl lined with a few paper towels or a lint free cloth.

Serve them warm with a dusting of cinnamon and powdered sugar, or honey or silan.

(Photos coming soon, the next time I make these, which should be later this month.)

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There are a couple of reasons determining how much stevia herb to use in a recipe is difficult.  I’ll explain how to work around them.

here

Stevia, like any other plant, has a season.  It is also grown in different places.

Stevia grows best and sweetest in a temperate climate with a rich soil.  Its peak season is in the fall, just when the flowers begin to bloom.  While it’s flowering, it’s getting sweeter and sweeter until its reproductive state starts to decline for the year.

Organic farms that grow with care produce the best stevia, hands down.  No mass farming effort can match stevia grown with natural fertilizers.  The leaves are also very sensitive, and its chemistry is naturally mildly anti microbial.  Most pests don’t like it either, so pesticides harm it rather than helping it.

If you know where the stevia comes from, that will help with determining how much you should use.  If you don’t then you should do a steeping test to see how strong the stevia you got is.

Put a teaspoon of stevia herb into 250 ml. (a full glass) of hot water, and let it settle.  Then stir it and let it settle again.  Then taste it.  Ideally, it should taste as if you’ve put about 1/8 cup of sugar into the water.  Do this every time you buy a new batch, and you’ll know the strength of what you have.

Stevia is a different kind of sweet than sugar.

Sugar, honey, and artificial sweeteners have an immediate sweetness.  Stevia has a slightly delayed sweetness.  It doesn’t take much stevia to make something sweet, and if you use too much, it’s overkill.  The problem is that because of the delayed reaction, it’s common for people to accidentally use too much.

The solution is to trust your strength test.  Don’t use more than necessary in a recipe.  People who must avoid sugar and are used to stevia will understand the delayed sweetness.  However, if you don’t want people (like the kids) to know what they’re eating is “health food”, then there’s a little trick.

Use a little natural sweetener, such as fruit paste or puree, or honey, to provide the initial sweetness.  By a little I mean really very little.  If, for instance, a recipe calls for a cup of sugar, you would use 1 tablespoon of stevia herb powder “bloomed” in about 2 tablespoons of very hot water, and only a teaspoon of honey or a tablespoon of silan (date syrup).  You can also use apple juice as part of the liquid in the recipe instead of any kind of syrup.  Stevia will stretch natural sugars a very long way.

Hopefully, these tips will help you in determining the sugar-stevia equivalent, or make your stevia recipes less of a risky exercise.  If you have any questions, feel free to comment.

Happy cooking!

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Also, I made this in the microwave in the small glass type pan from the 6 piece set, but you can bake it for 45 minutes at 350 degrees Farenheit if you prefer.  If you bake with a wood or pellet stove, put it in a pie pan instead of a deep pan.

You will need:

• 2/3 cup flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda (sodium bicarbonate)
• 1 teaspoon citric acid (also called “lemon salts”) or vitamin C powder (ascorbic acid)
• 2 tablespoons cocoa powder
• 1 tablespoon stevia herb powder (it should be the actual green herb powder, not the stripped steviosides)
• 2 tablespoons butter
• 2 medium eggs
• 1.5 tablespoons honey
• 3/4 cup milk
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Instructions:

1. Melt the butter and have it ready.
2. Beat the eggs, and have them ready.
3. Mix the dry ingredients in a bowl.
4. Cut in the butter until the mixture looks crumbly with no large lumps.
5. Stir in the eggs very well.
6. Stir in the honey well.
7. Then whisk in the milk with a wire whisk until the mixture is fairly smooth with no large or dry clumps.  You don’t want to overmix this.
8. Whisk in the vanilla extract until it’s well distributed.
9. If you like, you can fold in some finely chopped nuts.
10. Pour it into a well buttered pan.
11. Microwave it on HIGH for about 4 minutes.

Let it set for about 15 minutes before serving.

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Stevia

Although it is used often as a natural sweetener in Asia and Europe, and as a medicinal herb almost everywhere, it is not marketed for this use in the U.S. because of FDA policies.  Although it has been found to be safe when used in reasonable quantities, there is valid suspicion that the companies marketing other non carbohydrate sweeteners with saccharine and aspartame put a lot of money into suppressing stevia.

Food and drink manufacturers however, are beginning to see that there is a great demand for more natural products.  The Coca-Cola company in particular, launched Zero, which used steviosides and aspartame in combination, to make a better tasting diet cola.  It would have been nice if they made one that only used stevia, but well, baby steps.

How to Use Stevia

Stevia is said to be about 200-300 times sweeter than sugar by weight, so a little bit goes a long way.  To use it as a sweetener in your tea or other drinks, put about a tablespoon in one cup of hot water, and wait until the herb settles to the bottom.

One tablespoon of this concentration will usually be as sweet as a tablespoon of sugar.  Take care because sometimes it will be sweeter, depending on how close to the peak season the stevia was harvested.

Another way to do the same is to use a French press.  The screen in it will catch the particles of the herb if you prefer not to deal with them.  It won’t hurt you to eat the herb though.

In cooking, stevia can also be used as a powder.  There are stevia extract or stevioside powder packets that work about the same as other low calorie sweeteners, but to get the most benefits, it’s best to use stevia herb powder.  This way you get all of the ingredients that are naturally in the plant, which is better for you.

A teaspoon of stevia herb powder is as good as a half cup or more of sugar as far as sweetness.  The only problem is that it has no sugar or other carbohydrates, so it will not help with browning.  It should also not be used as a sugar substitute in canning.  However, it can be used as a sugar booster to reduce the amount of sugar you will need in a recipe.

You can cut the amount of sugar in most cake recipes by half or more, and use the absolute minimum needed for preservation in canning.  The difference as far as taste can be made up by stevia.

When we post recipes on this site, we’ll include details for preparation.

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