Amazon Stevia Recipes German Publisher Square One Publishers Category:  Cooking/Food/Wine Publisher: Square One Publishers ISBN-10:  1890612138 Type: Non-Fiction Pages: 196 Copyright: Oct 1 1999 ISBN-13: 9781890612139 Stevia is a potent, non-glycemic, safe, virtually calorie-free herbal sweetener. This book offers an introduction to stevia and includes over a hundred recipes using it as the sweetener. Stevia is an herbal sweetener which, in its extracted form, is over 200 times sweeter than sugar! Non-glycemic, safe, and virtually calorie-free, Stevia offers a healthy, natural alternative to cooking with refined sugar or artificial sweeteners. This book offers over a hundred recipes, developed in the Goettemoeller family kitchen, using Stevia as the sweetener. Learn how to incorporate this amazing herb into your own recipes and begin to sweeten your cookies, cakes, pies, puddings, jellies, salads, sauces, frozen desserts, and main courses the natural way -- with Stevia!   Excerpt "Most of us crave sweets. Food processors have learned to exploit this craving by adding highly refined sweeteners to processed foods. You don't have to subject yourself to all that unhealthy food! Stevia is a healthy, delicious alternative to sugars and artificial sweeteners. Delicious, that is, if you use a recipe designed for stevia. I can tell you from my own experience that stevia, even though many times sweeter than sugar, does not produce the mood swings, hyperactivity, and addiction as sugar does"

A Couple of Swells...A Look at Something New
You may already be a user of stevia, a natural sweetener about 300 times sweeter than sugar, but it was new to me. Co-op shelves yield several forms of this South American herb. I chose NuNaturals White Stevia Pure Extract because this powder was the form most often called for in "Stevia Sweet Recipes." The one-ounce bottle cost $13.99, but a single serving is only 1/32-1/16 of a teaspoon. The label estimates 800 servings, making stevia more economical than sugar, aspartame or saccharin, with none of the side effects of those sweeteners.

The most informative ten pages of this book are those that explain what stevia is, what its benefits are, its availability, its safety and some general use guidelines. the remainder 100+ pages offer recipes in which stevia replaces other sweeteners. It would be difficult for a first time user to make substitutes without these recipes, as the replacement rate of sugar to stevia seems downright bizarre on first reading. (Imagine a 9 x 13 cake that contains only 1 1/4 teaspoons of sweetener!) True, there are recipes such as chicken noodle soup or pesto sauce in which I would not use sweeteners at all, but if you would, you'll know the correct portions.

Because of FDA strictures, stevia is not available in commercial products. It is sold only as a dietary supplement; if you want its benefits, you have to cook. The recipes are easy to read and follow. The cross-referenced index and the spiral stay-flat binding make the book easy to use. Consider "Stevia Sweet Recipes" an important adjunct to your cookbook library.

(Nancy Pfister, Davis Food Co-op News, December 1999)