Most Helpful Customer Reviews
179 of 185 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Many problems with this book, February 8, 2002
This review is from: The Stevia Cookbook: Cooking with Nature's Calorie-Free Sweetener (Paperback)
I started using Stevia to reduce the amount of sugar and artificial sweeteners my family uses. It is fairly straight forward to replace sugar/Equal with Stevia in coffee, homemade salad dressings and sauces. But I was having lots of trouble with baked goods. So I THOUGHT one good cookbook could replace my expermenting. This book doesn't seem to be the one. First problem: Not really over 100 recipes. Does anyone really need a recipe for sweetening your coffee, making hot cocoa or lemonade? How about a recipe for making whipped cream (whip cream and stevia until soft peaks form)? Second problem: Not very many baked goods recipes: only 3 cake recipes, 2 muffin recipes, 9 cookie recipes. These are the types of recipes where subbing Stevia for sugar is very difficult and where even 2 or 3 GOOD recipes would be very useful for most cooks. Third problem: Even these few recipes are not very good. For the time and effort involved in home cooking, what you make should be healthy and at least as good tasting as what you can buy at a grocery. I've tried 3 recipes from this book - the "best" result was the Chocolate Mini Muffins. When I read the recipe I thought it looked ALOT like a biscuit recipe. Well the result was a slightly sweet sort-of-choclate biscuit baked in a muffin tin NOT a muffin. It was OK I ate one, the kids toke a bite of one each and we threw out the other 20. I really expect a cookbook author or even anyone who even rarely bakes to know the difference between a biscuit and a muffin. Don't waste your money on this book.
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54 of 54 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Unappealing recipes, February 5, 2005
This review is from: The Stevia Cookbook: Cooking with Nature's Calorie-Free Sweetener (Paperback)
Being new to stevia and very confused about how to cook with it, the types of stevia available and the sugar/stevia conversion proportions, I was eager to get this book. I was very disappointed. First off, the book seems light on both information about stevia and recipes. But more important, as a few other reviewers have noted, the recipes that are contained in the book are either so unappealing you have no desire to make them, or don't taste very good once you do make them. For example, I wanted a few good pudding recipes. The butterscotch pudding contains 4 cups of yams. The lemon pudding has yellow squash as its base. Now, I'm all for vegetables, but when I'm eating dessert, I want dessert. Not squash puree. I made a spaghetti squash recipe that had proportionally so much stevia it was sickening. I'm a good and experienced cook. These recipes were awful. Not recommended.
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80 of 86 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Sweet Satisfaction, March 24, 2000
This review is from: The Stevia Cookbook: Cooking with Nature's Calorie-Free Sweetener (Paperback)
Here's a book that tells you everything you need to know in an organized format, anticipates and answers your questions and concerns, tells you the truth about what stevia can and cannot do, so you avoid disappointments. In addition, the authors give you options of using all stevia, mixing with other sweetners, or using only sugar in some recipies. As a healthy eater, I have been using alternative natural sweetners for years (Dr. Bonner's Barleymalt Sweetner, for example), yet never was there a cookbook. Dr. Bonner's stopped making their sweetner, so I am on to stevia and the recipies in this book are fabulous. Buy it for the tantalizing salad dressings alone. Not only are the recipes good, they are unique, like the cucumber salad and the Green and White Jade Salad. As a vegetarian who does not eat eggs, I was so happy to see an egg-free, no-bake pumpkin pie recipe! Yum! Sugar does so many awful things to our bodies and our minds, it serves everyone to at least give the stevia product and this marvelous cookbook a chance. PS Even if you fail to fall in love with stevia, buy this book for the recipes and substitute other sweetners, which they suggest.
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