Sucanant or Cane Sugar?

Does anyone know if coconut sugar tastes good in coffee? My dh can’t have coffee without sugar and he can’t not have coffee…lol. Right now he uses evaporated cane sugar. And he’s tried Stevia and doesn’t like it, too bad.

I don’t think coconut sugar is good in coffee. It kinda makes it taste dirty?? For lack of a better description…

Dh and I both use liquid stevia in our coffee, and always heavy cream. Actually, he drinks coffee. I can’t have it. I drink Chocolate Mint Teecino and love it.

What a great thread, ladies!

For the record, we only use fruit, maple syrup, and raw honey (all of those organic) to sweeten anything. I’m not very concerned with what my baked goods end up looking like, and let me tell ya, they don’t look that great. They taste good, though!

Here’s a recipe for frosting I totally made up on the spot when I realized that my birthday was the next day and no one in the house was planning to make a cake for me. Boo hoo, I know, but it was a great motivator to find something I could eat. I’m not big on measuring as you can see…

Skim the fat part off of a can of organic full-fat coconut milk. Put it in a bowl and whip it to a froth. It’s easier if it is at room temp to do this. Add in some pureed fruit for taste and color. Use less fruit than you have coconut fat. I used org strawberries – yum! But you could do mango, applesauce, anything. Ooh, kiwi would make a fun color! Add in some vanilla if you (or someone who will eat this) are/is not a fan of coconut flavor and put the bowl in the freezer for a few hours. Not too long or it will be frozen solid. Then frost the cake or cupcakes and put back in the fridge otherwise it will get gooey and run all over. It’s not perfect, but it’s very tasty and can be very pretty. It’s definitely more of a creamy, thick glaze than frosting.

Good luck!

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I like the spoonable Stevita brand of stevia; we buy it in the “big” 16 oz container.  It doesn’t seem to have an bitter aftertaste.  1 T of this equals 1 cup of sugar, so when we use it in baked goods, and we do use it that way, we often add in very finely ground coconut or very finely ground almond to make up the bulk so the stevia & coconut/ almond mixture equals the measure given in the recipe.  Often the almond meal that I use is the left over meal from making almond milk.  

We also have begun to use homemade date paste in recipes.  Here is a link to making your own.  So far, this is working well for us, though we haven’t used it in all applications and are still learning the amounts.

We have used coconut sugar and sucanat in the past, but after much testing, found that this was causing one of the VERY bad allergic reactions even though coconut doesn’t seem to bother me in the least. The girls crave the sucanat, so I pulled that out of our rotation for that reason. All this to say, if it seems to work well for you, use it.  If it doesn’t seem to be working well for you or someone in your family, stop. We’re all different, and what works for one may not work for another. 

Someone will always have something negative to say about some food. So I don’t get too excited when I see blogs like the xylitol one unless it proves out for me. Stevia is bad, sugar alcohols are bad, agave is bad, wheat is bad, and on and on it goes. If someone notices problems when using a product, I say don’t use it. But others can use them with no issue.

However, if I had pets, I wouldn’t have xylitol in the house.

We just use evaporated cane juice and know that when we are eating sugary products, it is a hit on the system and needs to be monitored accordingly. 

As a grain-free family (except brown rice occasionally) you have to get creative for sure! I don’t have time to write a whole lot now, but I will later.

Still don’t have a lot of time. We are taking a quick lunch break from cleaning out the garage.

We do use brown rice occasionally for fried rice or as a side to our meat and veggies. None of us has a sensitivity to rice, thankfully.

I have not found a great recipe for bread made from coconut and/or almond flours. Not anything that is sandwich-worthy anyway. I do bake muffins, cookies, and quick breads still, so perhaps some savory baked good could replace bread until your family becomes accustomed to not having the bread item with the meals. I understand that bread is an easy, quick filler for meals, but if you’re wanting to move away from eating bread all the time, the only way to do it is to just do it. We weren’t big bread people before, except that my kids love pbj. Now I can spoil them with their favorites like banana bread and pumpkin muffins, in grain-free form.

Not having bread, pasta, and such accessible has been positive because our veggie consumption has greatly increased. Really, veggies bought in season aren’t that expensive and can be a wonderful filler on a plate when cooked in a yummy way. We do still eat potatoes, another economical starchy filler. Sweet potatoes are something else we eat quite regularly. Lettuce is cheap this time of year. I’ve been paying $1-1.25/head for beautiful, large heads of organic red and green leaf lettuce lately. That’s less than a loaf of bread!

Your body has to learn the difference between “carb full” and “fat and protein full”. I find that serving good fats with our meals makes the difference. A cheap veggie like carrots won’t keep anyone full for long, but when I roast them in coconut oil and then serve them with butter, they’re suddenly very filling because of the fat. I know many limit meat consumption, but we don’t. We might eat 1-2 vegetarian meals per week, but even those are still with eggs. Eggs are another inexpensive protein choice. We also do a lot of soups, which can utilize the scraps or a veggie that you might not have enough of for a full meal but can be added to a soup.

Those are some ideas. Now I need to head back to the garage before my husband decides to keep all the stuff he’s got in the garage sale pile!