Brownie Test Alternative Sweetener #3

fibrelle sweetener blend bag

Since it is chilly more than not this week, I'll keep working on this brownie testing series. I'm staying focused on substitutions for cane sugar and trying fibrelle which is a stevia sweetener blend. The bag it came in claims that there will not have the commonly reported licorice taste that some folks report with stevia sweeteners. I wonder how they managed that so I consult the ingredients and see that stevia is actually the fourth ingredient on the list. If I were buying this, I'd feel misled because "Stevia" is in big letters on the cover of the bag. I got this via the Amazon Vine program for free in exchange for a review on that seller site so this article is an unexpected bonus; no other form of compensation was received for sharing my honest experiences with this product.

Let's remember the baseline brownies below for our comparison.

The first thing I noticed about the fibrelle brownies is that they look a lot more like the baseline brownie than the two previous sugar sub tests were. The brownie might have taken longer to bake but I'm keeping of the test conditions the same except for the one substituted ingredient. This was slightly more sticky inside and a touch more sweet, but the cocoa powder came through making it a winner.

Unlike the previous two sugar-free products I've tried, this one has calories, 8 of the per teaspoon making this half the calories of cane sugar. In terms of carbohydrates, I see 1g dietary fiber and 3g polyols so I looked that up. Polyols are an organically occuring sugar alcohol so it will go through a human body differently so be wary of eating too much of it.

The performance of fibrelle was good, not as good as cane sugar but close enough that the difference in the amount of sugar and calories make it a good bet if you can afford it but like most sugar substitutes, it costs a good deal more than pure cane sugar does.