Finding a Natural Sweetener

While I am working on cultivating my own personal sweetness towards my husband :) our post today is concerning natural sweeteners for cooking and baking.  There are many reasons to stay away from highly processed and refined white sugar and here are some alternatives I have found...

Pure Cane Sugar

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While pure cane sugar is not as refined as the highly processed white sugar, the glycemic index is still pretty high.  It is a mildly better choice than white sugar, and has a little bit of a brown sugar taste.  Paul likes to use this in his black tea....but we are just using up what we have in preparation for the new alternatives we have found!
Agave Nectar

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This was our next option after trying the pure cane sugar.  It has a mild after-taste, but overall we really liked it.  We ordered this from Amazon for a while, because it was a bit cost-prohibitive in the local grocery stores.  It works well for baking, hot beverages, and cooking as well.  The only problem we found was that it can be a bit messy, and was starting to attract pantry moths!  So we looked for another alternative....


Coconut Sugar

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We were pretty excited when family introduced us to this natural sweetener last month.  We were looking for something granulated, so as not to be so messy, and were so thrilled that coconut sugar actually has a lower glycemic index than any other sweetener, and unlike most other sweeteners, actually has nutritional value!  That is pretty exciting.  So we have been using it liberally since then, and ordering it in bulk from Amazon.  We use the 'blond' coconut sugar, which has the more mild taste.  It does taste a little like brown sugar, but we don't notice the difference too much, and it has worked really well in all of our baking and cooking. 

We also use honey on occasion, for tea and oatmeal, but will most likely move away from that as well, and use just the coconut sugar.  Honey can be good to prevent allergies (which I am sometimes plagued with) if you buy the local stuff, but that is hard to find and can be very expensive.  

Those are just some of my thoughts on sweeteners.  Share your thoughts if you have found something I don't know about!  And here is a 'classic' book on the dangers of sugar that I might look into myself.  

May your day be filled with the sweetness of Christ's love....

Ruth