Why I use Stevia
When I want to sweeten my healthy desserts, or simply add a little flavor to my meals such as oatmeal, coffee, mug cakes, etc... I use Stevia rather than the other artificial sweeteners such as Sweet n Low, Truvia, etc. Why stevia? Stevia is an all natural sweetener made from the stevia plant. Many artificial sweeteners are made of extra additives and chemicals; furthermore, the long term effects of these additives aren't even fully known! Stevia, on the other hand, is natural. In particular, I use the brand SweetLeaf Stevia, which is made of purely stevia plant and inulin, which is a vegetable fiber! There are many different brands that sell stevia, but personally I've found SweetLeaf to be my favorite. Some brands are kind of bitter :/ But this one is perfect! You can get it granulated or as liquid drops, which is cool because sometimes I prefer one over the other depending on my mood haha. They've also got FLAVORS! I'm all about dem flavas :DD I loveeee trying new and unique flavors (as indicated by my crazy food, haha). SweetLeaf has 17 flavors and was kind enough to send me four flavors to sample - Watermelon, Valencia Orange, Chocolate, and Chocolate Raspberry. I also already owned the Hazelnut and English Toffee flavors, which are both AMAZING by the way. Love love love. I buy all my stevia on iherb.com because it's cheapest there. They sell for about $11, whereas grocery stores and health food stores usually raise the price to about $15. No thank you... So iherb is the way to go (you can use 'GIK407' for $10 off your order).I played around with the 4 samples and my goodnessss they're all really good. I'd say out of these four my favorites are the watermelon and the chocolate raspberry. I put some of the watermelon in my yogurt and topped it with unsweetened coconut and some strawberries. It was such a nice change from the usual flavors of yogurt bowls I make - like peanut butter, chocolate, caramel, etc. It was sweet and refreshing! The chocolate raspberry was also a good flavor because you can actually taste both; I was expecting to only be able to taste the chocolate. BUT all four flavors are great! They didn't disappoint. I need to get me some of the coconut soon, naturally! ;pHere's a dessert wrap I made using the chocolate raspberry stevia. I mixed some 8-10 drops with a huge spoonful of plain greek yogurt and spread it on a La Tortilla Factory low carb tortilla wrap. Then I wrapped it around a banana and froze it for about 45 minutes. After freezing, I sliced it up and topped it with walden farms chocolate syrup! Sooo good. This is a chocolate orange crepe I made using the valencia orange stevia. OBVIOUSLY I'm a fan of wraps XD THIS was amazing!! I've posted the recipe for this if you want to try it out! Which you should. Of course. ;p