Fruit sweet and sugar free - ingredients #6

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Fruit Sweet and Sugar Free by Janice Feuer 1993 Royal Teton Ranch Ingredients (cont'd) ******************** Fruit Sweeteners **************** These concentrated sweeteners are made from fruit that has been pressed into juice, then reduced for a long time until they have a consistency similar to that of honey.

They come in many flavours - apple, white and red grape, and raspberry, to name a few. My very favorite fruit concentrate, and the one used for almost everything we bake at The Ranch Kitchen bakery, we call "3-P" for it is made from the juices of peaches, pears and pineapple. One of the advantages of 3-P is its well rounded flavour.

It combines the three fruit flavours without any one of them predominating; and because it provides so much flavour along with its sweetness it is possible to use less sweetener.

We purchase our sweetener, 1,500 pounds at a time, from American Fruit Processors in Pacoima, California. Mystic Lake Dairy in Redmond, Washington, also produces a mixed fruit concentrate from peaches, pears, and pineapples. Mystic Lake Dairy's mixed fruit sweetener can be purchased in the refrigerator section of most natural food stores.

Make sure you also store these fruit sweeteners under refrigeration, but use them at room temperature for best results in blending with other ingredients.

Frozen fruit juice concentrates such as unsweetened apple and orange juice, are readily available in almost every grocery store. These frozen juice concentrates are less sweet and more liquid than the concentrates used at the bakery. Frozen apple juice concentrate can be placed in a small pan and brought to a boil, then simmered for 10 minutes to evaporate the excess liquid and concentrate the flavour.

This form of apple juice concentrate works well in pies, apple butter, sauces and fillings. Once thawed, these concentrates must be stored under refrigeration, where they will keep for about 2 weeks.

Orange juice concentrate is too strong to use for general purposes, and is best used in combination with apple juice concentrate.

To adjust recipes calling for sugar, reduce the amount of sugar in a recipe by half, and replace that amount with a concentrated fruit sweetener. You will then have to adjust only your techniques and not the liquid or dry ingredients. If there is a slightly acidic aftertaste in the finished product, you have used too much sweetener and can reduce it more next time.

When creaming butter and fruit sweetener, if either of the two is too cold, they will not come together. You can place the mixing bowl, if it is metal, over direct heat for a few moments to begin to soften the butter. If the mixing bowl is not metal, place the bowl in hot water. Do this for 15 to 30 seconds, just to heat the sweetener and butter long enough for them to come together when returned again to the mixer. It is important to cream the butter and sweetener until they are light and fluffy, especially if you heated the butter too long and it melted. Submitted By JIM WELLER On 10-09-95

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