What is sweetening power?
It is important to know the sweetening powers of the ingredients you use for your ice cream calculation.
When we talk about sweetening power, we are talking about how sweet a product or ingredient is compared to sugar. Sugar is always used as a basis. This has been given the value 1. All relative sweetening powers of all sugars and sweeteners have a number that you have to refute against sugar. For example, trehalose has an average sweetening power of 0.5 and thaumatin, for example, has a sweetening power of 2500. This means that trehalose is needed 2 times more than sugar to achieve the same sweetness level. Thaumatin on the other hand is 2500 times as strong as sugar. If you use 1 gram of thaumatin, you have the sweetness content of 2.5 kg of sugar.
As a rule, it is roughly the case that sugars fluctuate around the sweetening power of sugar. Between 0 and 2. Polyols (sugar alcohols / non-intensive sweeteners) also do this in principle. However, intense sweeteners start easily at a hundredfold and end up well into a thousandfold sugar.
Ice Cream Calculator
So these are important parts in making a good ice cream recipe. This knowledge gives you a lot of space in developing your ice cream recipes in the ice cream calculator. With this knowledge you can ensure that you can make savory ice cream, slightly sweet ice cream, very sweet ice cream. But with this knowledge you can also ensure that you can make sugar free & low sugar ice cream that is still sweet. And of course all the variants you want to be able to create for people with, for example, an allergy or diabetes.
Sweeteners
When you start working with sugar alternatives and sweeteners, it is very important to take into account the properties of all the different ingredients. Some may affect the substance of the final product, some may affect the taste. And that doesn’t always have to be positive.
Often the choice for a sugar alternative is not only based on the sweetening power. Calorie value, freezing point reduction and properties related to taste often also have a major influence on your choice when making your ice cream recipe.
