No One Said to Use Allulose in Ice Cream

sweeteners
(Central Florida Bob ) #1

Setup story: Back in May I started doing Alternate Day Fasts again and soon noticed a problem I never had before. I eventually narrowed it down to coming from erythritol in my coffee. I switched to using aspartame on those days and concluded I only had the bad effects if I had the erythritol over 24 to 36 hours into a fast, by which time it’s a really empty stomach.

About that time, my regular grocery store started stocking the Splenda brand allulose and they introduced it with a BOGO offer (buy one, get one free). Since I’d heard about allulose for years and was curious about it, I picked up two. They’re 19 oz containers - an odd size, but it made the per pound price the same as the 4lb bags or erythritol I’d been buying, pretty much $4/lb.

I’ve been making keto ice cream for over a year now and I’ve used a blend of Splenda and Swerve Confectioners Sugar, which is very finely powdered erythritol, as the sweeteners. Much like the store-bought Rebel brand ice cream, I found the ice cream texture too hard and the way we handled that was to take it out of the freezer 10 minutes ahead of serving.

Last month, I started a batch of ice cream and found I ran out of Swerve midway through. I made up the missing sweetener with allulose. That simple swap, 1/3 cup allulose for 1/3 cup Swerve turned the texture into the best ice cream texture I’ve made. We take it out of the freezer and serve it right then, no sitting for 10 minutes to soften. I’ve since made another two or three batches that way and the texture is dramatically better.

I may be ending my use of erythritol and switching over to allulose. Allulose is roughly twice the price of erythritol, and I honestly don’t like it as much in my coffee or tea, but it sure is good in the ice cream. It wouldn’t hurt me to make up for it being twice the price by using half as much of it.

(Bob M) #2

Is allulose the one that has 70% of the sweetness of sugar?

Do you mind sharing your recipe?

I would love to have something I can eat while everyone else has birthday ice cream cake.

#3

You mean, half as much for the same amount of unsweetened part of icecream? Because that would surely change the end result.

That is my problem with ice cream (I actually lost interest in ice cream physically, I just still wish I will eat it sometimes in the future… or my SO will), it uses the sugar (or in this case, allulose) for the texture. What if I want to use a fragment of the sweetener? Am I doomed? We both can’t eat super sweet things anymore (I can, with a generous amount of unsweetened chocolate or coffee but that’s not the point :wink: I hate oversweeten my desserts.)

Allulose would compete against xylitol in my case as I don’t like erythritol (still use it sometimes as my body likes my net carbs being super low. I try to avoid all sweeteners of course but there are circumstances) and my SO definitely prefers xylitol (he eats high-carb and hates added sugar but xylitol is way tastier than sugar anyway).

I add alcohol to make my ice cream softer but there is a limit for that… My eggnog ice cream could get away with the biggest amount of alcohol, not surprisingly… Especially that I still had Stroh80 rum at that time, that’s good stuff… I need to order some again.
(I think I have read about glycerine to make the texture better?)

Maybe alcohol and a little allulose would do the trick and I would end up with nicely soft ice cream…? If I ever can grab that stuff without extra efforts.
I have so many great desserts, I am in no hurry.

(Central Florida Bob ) #4

The package says it measures like sugar, but I think it’s more like you say 70% as sweet. 2/3 as sweet? One of those oddball problems is that since it’s over 6 years since I’ve had any sugar, is I’m not sure I remember how sweet it was or what it tasted like.

As it turns out, I use a simple recipe and only vary the flavorings. The last few batches base recipe is

2 eggs, beaten well (like for two minutes with an electric mixer)
1 cup half and half
1 pint heavy whipping cream
1/3 cup Splenda powder
1/3 cup Swerve confectioner’s blend
1/3 cup allulose
1/4 tsp xanthan gum - I usually add this to the final third cup of sweetener and sprinkle in a little at a time

For flavorings, I use concentrated extracts for fruit flavors. Whenever possible (strawberry, mostly) I like to add some freeze-dried fruits in it.

For vanilla, my wife and I love this


It has like 3g carb in a teaspoon and I’ve used two or three teaspoons of it, which is divided by the serving size. For 1 TBSP, 9g/6 servings. 1-1/2 g.

(Bob M) #5

Thanks, Bob. I think I have all of that at home. Though I don’t have an ice cream maker. I’ll have to ask for one of those.

(Allie) #6

I’ve heard it’s very good but not available here yet.

(Central Florida Bob ) #7

You bring up a lot in there that I have no good answers for but for this:

What I meant wasn’t about ice cream but using half as much allulose in general. Say 1 tsp of allulose in coffee instead of 2 tsp of erythritol. One way to reduce the impact of it costing twice as much per pound is to use half the amount.

In my last few batches, instead of 1/3 cup Splenda, 2/3 Swerve confectioners, I kept the Splenda and switched to 1/3 c Swerve confectioners, 1/3c allulose. So half the amount of erythritol.

As for xylitol in ice cream, I have a bag but never tried it. I make ice cream for my wife and I and she’s more sensitive to sugar alcohols than I am. She can’t eat sorbitol or mannitol, which are very commonly used and another one or two that I can’t think of. Alcohol, I’ve just never tried. Likewise, I’ve read alcohol and glycerine are good tricks to try.

My ice cream is the only thing I’ve ever seen that she’ll eat the same size portion I will. I’m 6’ tall, she’s 4’10". I can’t say I weigh twice what she does, but it’s close to that.

(Central Florida Bob ) #8

I did quite a bit of research into those before I settled on one where you freeze the cylinder and the machine spins it for you:


instead of the kind where you layer ice and rock salt around the cylinder and spin it by hand or motor. The next step up in appliances have a refrigerator in them that freezes your mix and I distinctly remember reading reviews where a guy said those make good ice cream but he couldn’t really say they made better ice cream than these do. Today, those prices are like $70 for this one and $250 for the kind with the built-in refrigerator. To get better ice cream, he had to go to a real high level appliance at closer to $700.

Someone here said they made ice cream by pouring the ingredients into something they shook by hand and then let it freeze.

(Bob M) #9

Thanks, Bob. We had an ice cream maker, but left it in the garage in our former house. The mice got into it. So, we tossed it.

That looks like a good one. Like you, I remember doing research on these and the really expensive models were supposedly great. But for the number of times I’ll make ice cream, having a $700+ piece of equipment seems like overkill.

I added that one to my “wish list”.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #10

The problem with adjusting the amount of sweetener in recipes is to know whether it is there solely for the sweetness, or for “structural” reasons. For instance, the sugar in a cake or bread recipe affects both the sweetness and the texture of the result. And if you want to use a non-sugar sweetener in that recipe, all such sweeteners can be adjusted to give the right sweetness, but not all of them will yield the proper texture. (In fact, most of them will not; especially when yeast is involved, because the yeast feeds on the sugar.)

I believe that allulose behaves much as sugar does, chemically speaking, so when a recipe calls for it, it probably requires it for texture, as well as sweetness. And I’m pretty sure that the recipe will have been adjusted to yield a flavour as close to the original as possible.

(Jane) #11

Allulose is the most expensive sweetener but I use it in anything that needs to perform like sugar, not just taste sweet.

For example, fresh cranberries at Thanksgiving for cranberry sauce - I tried them with erythritol and it didn’t thicken. The next year I used Allulose and it gelled nicely and I could not tell the difference between Allulose and real sugar.

(Bob M) #12

Allulose also supposedly does well when heated, too. So, BBQ sauces or the like are good candidates for allulose.

My only consideration is I had something made with a lot of allulose and had a poor gut reaction. I don’t know whether that was a one-off, and also I can have some similar reactions with other sweeteners, so it might not be a big deal.

(Eric) #13

I tried Allulose in a keto muffin recipe and it turned out great and no aftertaste like Erythritol. I made it orginally with Erythritol and there was sticky liquid everywhere and it soaked through the cups for the cupcakes/muffins. Not the case when I used Allulose. Definitely my go to now for the rare occasions I want to make a keto “sweet” treat

(Central Florida Bob ) #14

That’s what I’ve heard the most. It cooks like a sugar because it is a sugar, a 5 carbon sugar like fructose, except it has one part arranged differently, so it’s not metabolized like fructose.

The substitution of 1/3 cup of allulose for 1/3 cup Swerve was dramatic. When I make a batch of ice cream I start after lunch, sometimes 1PM, sometimes 2. I leave the liquid in my big freezer for two hours and then run it in the ice cream maker. That takes about 20 minutes, then into the big freezer until about 8. By that time, the erythritol version would be firm enough to cut a “block” of it, but not too hard to fill a spoon, while the allulose version is almost too soft to cut.

(Laurie) #15

I used to have that Cuisinart ice cream maker and thought it was great. I also had a spare bowl (or whatever it’s called) in the freezer, so I could make another batch the next day if I wanted to.

Having the ice cream get too hard in the freezer never happened. My boyfriend and I (and visitors, if any) always ate it up as soon as it was made.

#16

You probably feel everything sweeter now anyway…
But it’s individual too, how sweet we feel things. My SO and me both don’t feel sweetness like it’s supposed to and we are different as well. I don’t feel maltitol sweet at all alone, maybe it’s normal, I don’t know. But my body dislikes maltitol even though its taste is okay in things where it finally becomes sweet but maybe 1/4 as sweet as erythritol… While my SO feels stevia not nearly as sweet as it’s supposed to be and he has this with erythritol too. I don’t, erythritol is properly sweet to me, the 70% as sweet as sugar/xylitol sounds right. I hate stevia so I am not sure I feel any sweetness in that sea of horribleness but I don’t care anyway…

So it’s complicated. It’s fine, one figures it out for themselves (with family members it’s a tad more complicated, it’s good my SO stopped eating sugar when I did and his sweet needs lowered like me so we are close enough) but when sugar affects texture, it’s a problem if we just don’t need that amount of sweetness, even hate that…

Good things yeast are fine without sugar. I often wondered why people add sugar even to their breads. My anchestors never did and they made great breads… Even my keto bread (that I never make, whatever, there were a few times) has no sugar, of course and it rises. Maybe it’s different with sugar but once I tried it that way (someone’s recipe had a tiny honey) and nothing changed. But maybe it’s some personal thing. I do a few things everyone says impossible, I just don’t understand, I surely don’t have magic…

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #17

Of course yeast can use the glucose in the grain; this is typical of sourdough type breads. But all I meant was that in bread recipes that call for sugar, the sugar is there primarily to feed the yeast, and you won’t get the same results without it.

(GINA ) #18

I mix allulose and Bochasweet and it works nicely in baked goods. I have also used allulose to make SF strawberry jam and it gave it the thick sticky texture jam should have.

I must be an erythritol super-taster. Anything I add it to tastes like toothpaste.

(BuckRimfire) #19

If you have a KitchenAid mixer, you could get one of these. We have one, and it worked OK for conventional ice cream. I don’t know if we’ve used it since going low-carb. It sounds like the allulose recipes might work.

I’ve always been suspicious of how durable the plastic parts would be, but we haven’t broken it yet. I’m not sure we ever used it more than a dozen times, though.

https://m.kohls.com/product/prd-120083/kitchenaid-kica0wh-ice-cream-maker-attachment.jsp?

(BuckRimfire) #20

Hmmm. Wikipedia says “D-allulose was found to be more reactive than fructose and glucose in glycation reactions.”

Maybe one should not eat allulose at every meal, but this would not make me entirely fearful of it. Just seems prudent not to have it circulating around a high percentage of the time.