Homemade liquid sweetener from Stevia

I buy bulk pure Stevioside powder online. It's much cheaper to buy the pure powder that way and make your own stock solution. I make my stock strong enough so that 1 drop equals 1 teaspoon (4g) sugar in sweetness, 3 drops per tablespoon (12g).

For 100 ml:

23.5 gram Stevia powder

20 ml 95% ethanol

Bring to 100 ml with water.

The alcohol is added both because Stevia isn't that soluble in plain water, but is in 20% ethanol, and as preservative. I've kept a single jar for over three years now, opening periodically; no mold, no growth problems.

I find the powder just too fiddly to work with in the kitchen; tiny scoops, or always weighing out 100 mg. Plus the pure powder likes to puff up into the air. A good strong stock solution is far easier to handle cooking-wise.

Note: bottle lasted through June 2016 at room temp, with no spoilage or degradation. So 2-3 year shelf life, at least.

An alternative would be to simply buy a stevia plant. It's much like mint so hard to kill, easily sourced in England (i have one in my garden which came from a local garden centre) I'm sure they must be available in America too.

The leaves are so sickly sweet its unreal. I can't stand the taste but then again I'm pretty sugar free in my diet anyway so even the slightest amount of sweetness makes me feel slightly ill (too long as a pastry chef).

Rambling aside, as I mentioned the leaves are so sweet I see no reason why infusing the leaves in water. Like you would for mint tea, wouldn't produce a very sweet water liquid.

Stevia is marketed as not containing any calories. As such it will never be a substitute for sugar in baking as apart from being sweet it holds no other reseblense to sugar. It won't for example caramelize nor can it be used as a preservative.

As far as a sugar syrup substitute you could infuse the stevia in water and thicken it with xanthan gum. Though it will never taste like caramel it may work for fruit coulis and jellys (jello).

Yes, you can cook with Stevia, and yes, you can mix it with water to make a liquid sweetener. The Hermesetas website has a few dessert recipes.

For a quicky experiment into making a liquid sweetener with Stevia, I mixed nine 1 gram packets of Stevia in the Raw with 3 TBS of water and brought it to a boil. A tsp of the liquid (into which the Stevia completely dissolved when it boiled) was just the right amount to sweeten a cup if tea.

Just for comparison sake, Stevia in the Raw contains Stevia and dextrose.

It will sweeten like sugar, but it won't "cream" like sugar, nor will it make a syrup like sugar. It should work fine to sweeten jams, jellies and gelatin desserts, but it won't have the preservative action of sugar.

The label on your product should tell you how much of the product you will need to equal the sweetness of an amount of sugar.