I am trying to come up with a recipe for a sugar free sno-cone syrup. I was thinking of trying something with unsweetened kool aid and sugar free jello, but I could use some suggestions! Any ideas?? Mona Lea in S.E. Missouri

-- Mona Lea (monalea@hotmail.com), May 07, 2002

Answers

Mona, Maybe you would like to try natural flavors or extracts that you can get at a health food store. They come in almond, vanilla, cinnamon,lemon, mint, orange, peppermint to name a few. If you want to use honey or pure maple syrup as a base and add fruits and cook it down to a syrup. Or use any unsweetened frozen juice as a base. Just a few suggestions, haven't really tried them for sno-cones but I cook alot without sugar or artificial sweeteners, personally I think the artificial sweeteners are even worse for your health than sugar. Wishing you good eating!

-- Marilyn in CO (www.tomeatbeef@aol.com), May 07, 2002.

Take a look at "Stevia". Stevia is a plant with leaves being 300 times sweeter then sugar, no calories and perfect for people with diabetes.

Stevia can be purchased in leaf form and can be boiled to extract its sweet treasure into a liquid form, but the liquid is green. It is sold in health food stores in a clear liquid or white powdered form (distilled process)

There is no after taste as with other sweeteners and in my opinion and I can't tell the difference between sugar and Stevia. The only thing I have found that it does not taste good in is Coffee.

If preparing baked goods with Stevia, one needs to add the volume to the recipe as sugar is not only sweet but adds volume. So add a bit more sugar, less liquid and you sort of have to play with the recipe. There are books written on the subject and a search on any search engine will give you more then enough reading to keep one busy for hours.

-- westbrook (westbrook_farms@yahoo.com), May 08, 2002.

I remember reading somewhere of making snowcone syrup using about 3/4 c. water with 1 envelope of (regular) Kool-Aid, mixed with the desired amount of sugar. Perhaps you could just use the same amount of water with a pkg. of the sugar free Kool-Aid. I've been getting away from using the sugar-free products, besides the supposed health risks we find many of them to be too sweet. When we do use them, I mix 1 pkg. of sugarfree Kool-Aid with one pkg. of unsweetened Kool-Aid (without adding sugar). It is a bit tart but that's the way we prefer it, and it cuts the amount of artificial sweetener per serving in half.

I would think the Jello mixture poured on the shaved ice would turn into little hard clumps of Jello. But it might work, I'd experiment with it. As long as it does the job, most kids don't care what it looks like anyway...they might even prefer it, LOL!

One other thought is to try the Splenda sweetener. It's kinda spendy but I only use half the amount they tell you to. It is supposed to be equal to sugar but that is WAY too sweet. I like it because it doesn't have that odd taste most artificial sweeteners do.

-- Lenette (kigervixen@nospam.com), May 10, 2002.