Hi, y’all! I’m going down to visit my family this weekend, and I want to make a cheesecake for them. I love the Cordon Rose cheesecake recipe:
but usually make it with a graham-cracker crust and a fruit topping, like cherries or such.
Thing is, my mom’s diabetic. She can do small quantities of sugar, but she loves experimenting with sugar alternatives. And it’d be a kindness if I can figure out how to make her a serving or two of sugar-free cheesecake to eat along with the rest of us.
My ideal would be to use the Cordon Rose recipe, but set aside an eighth of the ingredients and use an artificial sweetener for them. Second best would be a recipe that’s still good but uses artificial sweetener.
I can find plenty of recipes for sugar-free cheesecake online, but they either use ingredients I don’t wanna (such as sugar-free instant pudding mix), or use ingredients I’ve never used before (such as monk fruit extract). So I figured I’d check with y’all: does anyone have any experience making sugar-free cheesecake and can give your ideas?
Note: if your idea is anything else–“Just give her a slice of cheese and some almonds, she’ll love it! She can just eat a few bites of regular cheesecake! Make a sugar-free cheesecake for everyone, nobody will know the difference! Suck it up and use instant pudding mix!”–I’d appreciate your telling your cat instead. I’d like to fully explore the small sugar-free cheesecake option thoroughly.
I’ve never made a sugar-free cheesecake, but I’ve made literally hundreds of them and used to be a pastry chef so I know something about it in general, if nothing else.
If it were me, I’d use nutrasweet in place of sugar for her portion - taste it while you’re adding it until it tastes close. Cheesecake is good even when it’s just barely sweet anyway, so you don’t need to overdo it. It’s the only sugar substitute that tastes sweet to me without an aftertaste. It’s not as good as sugar, of course, but it’s the least bad of the artificial sweeteners.
Stevia and monkfruit sweeteners taste different to different people, and neither taste remotely like sugar to me or even sweet.
Will her portion have the fruit on it? If so, you won’t need as much sweetness in the cheesecake.
Agave syrup is good, and tastes sweet, but does contain sugars. I’ve read that some diabetics can eat it - supposedly it’s “diabetic-friendly” whatever the heck that means. I wouldn’t use it without checking with her.
I’m telling my (fictional) cat that it’d be a good idea to ask LHOD’s mom what sweeteners she’s experimented with that she actually likes and use one of those. Add a bit of it at a time to the cream cheese until it’s just sweet enough.
I’m diabetic.
Generally, I hate diabetic desserts. They are always disappointing.
Here’s what I’d prefer: tell me you’re doing a cheescake. That day I could be very careful with my carbs and have a small helping. If I was lucky and everything worked out with the timing, it could be fine. And I’d get the real thing.
Then I’m wondering how the texture(which is very important in cheesecake) would be with artificial sweeteners.
So, when I was doing low-carbing, I did something close to this one:
The key takeaways for me, were using almond flour (and I wouldn’t buy the sellers “special” option, but use any finely ground option you could find) for the crust, and otherwise use the best quality ingredients I could reasonably find for the rest, mostly better cream cheese and butter than the normal store brands I get by with the rest of the time.
Other posters have made a good point about non-sugar sweeteners, some people find options to be more palatable than others. For me, myself, and I, I used saccharin as my artificial option most of the time, but used powdered erythritol for baking, since it came in a granular form that could be subbed 1-for-1 volume-wise for sugar in most baked applications. It had a minor aftertaste, and it’s a sugar alcohol, so it is not a zero-sugar option, but it was easier to use.
But if your mom has a reaction to it, or it tastes off to her, nix it and consider another. I also found that it helped to add a little additional flavor to the cheesecake to help mask alternate sweeteners, a touch of lemon or orange zest can be nice, and if you keep it low it won’t strongly influence the flavor except as an accent, similar to the option you listed.
I was just doing a low carb thing for the past few months, and have in the past. That recipe ParallelLines links to looks great. I used almond flour pretty often when I would bake low-carb things too.
As for artificial sweeteners, yes, it is a tricky proposition. When I first did low carb in 2019, I used to use powdered erythritol for baking or making keto ice cream when I got a rare sweet tooth. Erythritol worked great as a sugar substitute in baked stuff, both flavor and texture-wise. But a couple years ago studies started coming out pointing to a connection between use of erythritol and increased risk of heart attack and stroke. I mean, for occasional use in the one-off cheesecake maybe it’s fine-- we all make choices and tradeoffs with enjoyment vs. healthiness in what we eat and drink. But I stopped using it myself. Also many powdered versions of stevia and monkfruit extract use erythritol as a bulking agent, so be aware of that and read ingredients.
I tried powdered allulose, which ParallelLines’ cheesecake recipe recommends. Allulose is made from monkfruit, but I didn’t find it to be a great tasting substitute, and if I use too much of it, it gives me a little bit of digestive issues. I switched to this Lakanto brand concentrated monkfruit extract, which is not cheap, but it is very sweet and as close to sugar as I’ve found. The cheesecake recipe recommends against liquid artificial sweeteners, but only a few drops are needed in anything you use it in.
Well, since LHoD’s sister has taken it out of his hands, glad there’s a resolution at east.
@solost, that’s interesting review on erythritol. I had read a lot of back-and-forth on risk assessments for the various sugar alternatives, but a lot of it is conflicting, so I’ll absolutely need to do more research. I stopped doing an aggressive low-carb diet with Covid, for both the need for comfort food and the frequent difficulties with getting some of what I wanted with regular availability and cost, and have moved on to more of a “moderation in all things, especially carbs/sugar” sort of middle ground.
I still loose weight, but not as much, or at least, not as fast. But I’m less tempted to binge/fall. I’m absolutely better off avoiding most/all artificial sweeteners (I only add them to my coffee these days) if for no other reason than breaking the habit of wanting sweets so frequently!
Here’s the recipes I used when I was low-carbing. I would make this cheesecake once or twice a year. It’s great and would be tasty to anyone, diabetic or not.
Nut crust:
1/4 c finely chopped pecans
1/4 c finely chopped almonds
1/4 c finely chopped walnuts
3/4 c almond clour
2 tbs melted butter
Mix everything and press into a springform pan.
OR
Hazelnut crust
1 1/2 c hazelnuts
1/3 c vanilla whey protein powder
4 tbs melted butter
Grind hazelnuts. Mix with protein powder and butter. Press into springfoam pan. Bake at 350 until lightly browned and slightly pulling away from the sides.
Cheesecake filling:
1 1/2 lbs cream cheese (room temp)
1 c bulk Splenda (or the equivalent of a different sugar substitute that would equal 1 c of sugar)
5 eggs (room temp)
2 tsp vanilla
2 tsp lemon juice
16 oz sour cream
Yeah, you get into a whole can of worms with artificial sweeteners. Some of them are not good for diabetics because, despite the fact they are zero calorie and have a low glycemic index, they can still raise blood glucose levels. Others, like erythritol as mentioned, have other possible health issues associated with them.
I’ve been using a fair amount of monkfruit extract lately, and I won’t be surprised if a study comes out soon announcing “strong connection discovered between use of monkfruit and growing extra limbs out of random places”. But, as you say, all things in moderation. I don’t usually have a huge sweet tooth anyway. I mostly just add a couple drops in my morning coffee these days.
My mom is super into artificial sweeteners, so if I do end up making the cheesecake (I’ll need to negotiate carefully with my sister on this one, due to family dynamics–I don’t want to tread on any toes, but also think it’d be good if I handled the dessert across the board), I’ll check with my mom to find out what sweetener that I can obtain in the next 48 hours she’d prefer. I’m not gonna order some gray-market sweetener from Luxembourg, but if it’s something I can pick up at the supermarket, I might do that. Whatever health perils there are, I’ll trust her judgment on the matter.
Unless it’s important that it be homemade, you can check if a local bakery makes sugar-free cheesecake. Some do. It looks like it can be pretty spendy, but my guess is that it would also be pretty good. (After all, bakeries that sell sub-par products tend to go out of business.)
Never made a sugar free cheesecake, but I did recently make a gluten free one. That was a trivial change; I just used gluten free graham crackers. The crust was very underwhelming. Aside from not tasting right, it also didn’t toast properly.
A change that might be worth it is upgrading to better eggs. The eggs from chickens that eat bugs and “natural” things are so much better than just typical grain fed eggs. Of course I just use the cheap eggs, but I wonder if the extra richness from better eggs would help compensate for using artificial sweeteners.
@Cervaise , are you holding out on us? Do you have the Korean Sunscreen version of artificial sweeteners?
I speculate that LHoD is aware of Luxembourg only insofar as it’s an obscure little-known country, and extrapolates from there that we’re some kind of smugglers’ paradise with a Wild West marketplace. Nothing could be further from the truth. We’re the heart of the EU and we have one of the most strictly regulated food markets in the world.
Just want to second this sensible approach. Personally, I’d rather have an itty-bitty taste of a well made “real” dish, than a large serving of some Frankenstein alternative.
Lord, sorry–I wasn’t even going for that, I was trying for the least-likely place to be smuggling artificial sweeteners, and chose Luxembourg because it sounded so ridiculous, and didn’t want to offend/annoy anyone. I failed in that and apologize.
