Any suggestions regarding Maltitol?

[nate]

I just made a batch of diabetic friendly chocolate for a friend, and while it didn't come out great I think it might be a direction worth pursuing.

I used sugar substitute I haven't seen mentioned here, which is being marketed as 'VitaSugar' [www.bioneutra.ca/product.htm]. It's an isomalto-oligosaccharide with a low sweetness but very pleasant slightly malty taste. I haven't tried all the alt-sugars out there, but to my taste this is one of the best for flavor: no cooling, no metallic, nothing cloying.

My friend doesn't really crave sweets, so I decided to make it as a 70% bar despite the low sweetening level. I roasted 2.5 lbs of Tabasco beans in the Behmor at 1lb-P1-A, cracked them with a screenless Champion, and winnowed thoroughly with a hair dryer. I got 1.8 lbs of clean nibs, to which I added .8 lbs of VitaSugar. I mixed these in a bowl, and put it and the Santha bowl in a warm oven.

After about an hour (mix temp at about 115F) I started the Santha and added the mix. It was difficult, and I had to unscrew the tension cap to allow it to keep turning. In the future, I'll probably grind the mix finer as I've been doing in the past, either in a blender or with the Champion. After running free in the Santha for an hour or so, I tensioned the rollers and let it run for 24 hours.

It ended up a very good consistency, perhaps a little more viscous than a standard sucrose version. Based on the way it feels, I'm guessing that the VitaSugar is pretty hygroscopic. I sort of partially tempered it by letting it cool to a decent tempering temperature in the Santha with occasional stirring, scraping the solidified sides back down into the the bowl. I then poured it into a large rectangular container.

The taste was good, but very aggressive: the drunken sailor in an dark alley coming at you with broken beer bottle type of aggressive. The Tabasco beans are very assertive to begin with, and the sweetening due to the VitaSugar was minimal. I was expecting it to taste like an 85%, but it came out tasting closer to a 90-95%. But the taste that was there was good. We had a sizable hunk with some red wine last night, and found it enjoyable.

If I did another batch, though, I think I'd sweeten it a lot more --- maybe go for 50% nibs, adding 1% lecithin to compensate for the lower cocoa butter. I think the Tabasco beans will come through plenty strong at that level, and the added sweetness will make the eating a little less stressful.

And if anyone (paging Sebastian and sugaralchemy) knows more about potential downsides of isomalto-oligosaccharides, I'd love to hear about it!

[Sebastian]

from your description, what you're buying, i'm guessing, is a preblended mix of isomalt and inulin, sold under a trade name (which means you're paying too much for it). isomalt's a great sugar alcohol, inuln's a great fiber. i have my people use them often industrially. only downside of isomalt is that it's digestive tolerance is virtually identical to that of maltitol (0.3g / kg body weight), and inulin ferments....they do taste good, however.

[nate]

sebastian said:

from your description, what you're buying, i'm guessing, is a preblended mix of isomalt and inulin, sold under a trade name (which means you're paying too much for it).

I bought it off the shelf from a health-food store at 5 USD per lb, so I'm sure I'm paying too much for it. But I'm pretty sure it's not a blend.

The company making it (BioNeutra) is a University of Alberta offshoot, and have received a good deal of funding to commercialize their process: www.npicenter.com/anm/templates/newsATemp.aspx?articleid=19438&zoneid=2
From what I can tell, their product is described in this patent:
patents.ic.gc.ca/cipo/cpd/en/patent/2474999/summary.html

The description they give in the patent is beyond my current knowledge. But if I've got it right, they are enzymatically breaking starches down into short saccharide chains, and then fermenting away simple sugars to leave only the 3-5 unit oligosaccharides. Would this be functionally equivalent to an isomalt and inulin blend? And would it have the same tolerance problems?

Thanks!

[Sebastian]

From the patent then, it appears to be a short chain oligofructose. Doesn't appear to be any isomalt present (curious as to why they'd describe it that way then..). Tolerance will still be an issue, expect lots of fermentation....

[sugaralchemy]

Sebastian, actually this company is producing isomaltooligosaccharides and selling them in various pure forms.

Nate, isomaltooligosaccharides are rather similar to fructooligosaccharides / inulin. They are very similar structures, I would expect the sweetness not to be very high, and the potential for gas to be very great, but the true laxative potential (osmotic effect) to be lower than most sugar alcohols. Typically a positive heat of solution, too, versus sugar's slightly negative heat of solution. Hygroscopicity and increased viscosity is to be expected.

You cannot really compare isomaltooligosaccharides to a blend of inulin + isomalt. They are very different things.

The reason your chocolate tasted so dark is because of the relatively low sweetness of isomaltooligosaccharides, as you already picked up. Isomaltooligosaccharides are mostly a bulking agent, and probably not the best one at that due to cost and gas/bloating potential. Nutritionally, they look to have basically no conversion into glucose, so it is mostly an issue of taste/functionality/digestibility.

[gap]

isomaltooligosaccharides - seriously, that's a word !?!?! :-)

[Chad]

Has anyone tried just not adding any sugar or sugar substitute to their chocolate?

In a very small portion I tried combining:
46% Milk Powder (0% fat)
31% Cocoa Liquor
23% Cocoa Butter.

By my calculation this 38.5% fat.
Obviously, the mouth feel was powdery as I had not refined it at all, and the lack of sugar (or substitute) is noticeable, but I am left with the thought that there may perhaps be some potential.

Has anyone tried such a recipe.
Would it turn out? ie would it temper up after being refined.

I would hate to ruin a batch of chocolate if there is no chance of this working.

Thanks in advance for any thoughts

Chad

[princessvaliant]

I just read through the three pages of this post, and wonder - now that it's a couple of years later since the last - if anyone has experimented more with Stevia in making a chocolate that diabetics can tolerate? I'm not sure about the differences in Stevia and Truvia, or if they're the same under different names.

[Sebastian]

Stevia is the name given to the rebiana a portion of the extract. truvia is the commercial branded name once it's blended with a carrier and bulking agent. there are no commercial chocoalates made with it as far as i'm aware, although i am quite positive the formulations exist should the demand justify doing so.

[avivajoy]

I've been experimenting with a sugar free chocolate for a while now and flavour wise have achieved success.

I have two major problems with my chocolate and it happens with both the milk and dark.

Problem #1: I had the milk chocolate in the melting machine over night and in the morning there was and oily puddle (cocoa butter methinks) on the top, after vigorous stirring it homogenized but streaks kept appearing in the melted chocolate but disappeared when stirred. After tempering and when the chocolate had crystalized there were faint streaks and dark spots.
I'm thinking I need to add more lecithin (I had granular lecithin at 3g for 4k)

Problem #2: At the correct temperature for tempering (30 Milk, 32 Dark) the chocolate was almost set, a spoon stood upright in it. It was thick and claggy and impossible to work with.
After adding tons of cocoa butter and raising the temperature to 36 degrees it was workable and I managed to make some bars etc. They came out the molds easily which makes me think it wasn't over crystalized and had a very good snap and didn't melt when touched which means they were either tempered correctly or at least not incorrectly.
The only things I can think of that could cause this are: lack of lecithin and/or too much inulin (can't blame the milk powder as it's not present in the Dark), also its possible the chocolate absorbed moisture through being in the machine during the day for 3 days but if the chocolate was 'wet' then I don't think I would have been able to use it. I also have a dehumidifyer near to the Santha and it didn't happen when there was higher humidity than there is now.
It could be one thing or a combination, I'm at my wits end and would really appreciate any help.

[LLY]

Hi,

I tried to make white chocolate using coconut sugar. (picture attached).

I think that it has a strong after taste and the color is deep caramel, So the bottom line is that it doesn't work with coconut sugar solely, it will be interesting to try 20% coconut sugar or something similar.
 But if I want a caramel flavour why not caramelized the milk powder?
I assume that it won't work for milk and dark chocolate as well.

I bought Xylitol now. From what I read is a good alternative for sugar with no aftertaste.

When I will get it I will try to make a product with a similar taste to cane sugar.




Anyone had tried this product? or maple sugar (that is not easy to get and expensive)..

[Sebastian]

I'm not sure you've arrived at the right conclusion. Post your details (what was your exact formulaltion, and why you believe it failed? Coconut sugar can have a deep brown color, so suggesting that it failed because the color of the finished product was similar to the color of your starting ingredients does't sounds solid to me.

If you want something that looks and tastes like it's made with sugar - use sugar (sucrose). Coconut sugar is 80% sucrose anyway...i'm not sure i understand why folks continue to want to take the path of most resistance with regards to ingredient sourcing....

[LLY]

The exact formulation: 45% cocoa butter, 45% non fat dried milk, 10% coconut sugar (0.3 lecithin - not included in the calculation).

I also pay attention that the taste changed and not in a way you can ignore it - i.e after molding the taste was sweet and have a aftertaste, after two days it was less sweeter with less aftertaste.

Regarding the failure: The color is way too deep for me but it's not the issue, the "failure" was the aftertaste.

So I guess next time I will combined xylitol and coconut sugar (or even maybe cane sugar) and increase the sugar amount to around 15% (I also realized that 10-15% sugar for milk/white it's OK but if you want to make a ganache you need more sugar).

I think it's correct to assume that different kind of sugar have different taste, aftertaste and characteristics.

The "homemade artisan chocolate" is combined from different ingredients (in this case: sugar) in order to get an healthy and tasty product.

[Sebastian]

Chocolate always tastes different over time. It's flavor profile will modify itself for a good 30 days after you've moulded it or so - that's very normal. Taste it a month after you've made it to get a feel for what it's going to end up tasting like.

Coconut sugar as noted is 80% sucrose (table sugar), with the other 20% being all sorts of whatever. Meaning it will likely taste different each and every time you make it from a different lot of the coconut sugar. I'm sure you know this as well, but you've got your NFDM and sugar levels reversed vs what's typically done (i.e. the milk component is usually the smaller %, and the sugars component is normally the higher). May be your personal preference.