While we were celebrating Swerve Breakfast Month, I decided to expand my repertoire and experiment with homemade pop tarts.

It seemed like a no-brainer. A convenient, potentially healthy breakfast treat, beloved by adults and kids around the world that, in their natural state are highly unhealthy. Perfect.

I started with the delicious looking recipe posted on Smitten Kitchen – http://smittenkitchen.com/2010/04/homemade-pop-tarts/ – which seemed easy and a perfect starting point for a Swerve makeover.

So, (spoiler alert) long story short, they were a complete failure. Sure they tasted good (really good) but they were, let’s say hideous and I’ve rarely experienced something harder to make. After talking to several esteemed friends, I’ve come to the conclusion that the climate was wrong. When I started out, it was a beautiful, cool morning so I left the windows open. By the time the dough was ready, it had become hot and humid but I was so engrossed I didn’t notice so the moisture content in the kitchen and in the dough was way too high. The dough became slick, yet sticky and wouldn’t roll out evenly. While the recipe claimed a serving size of 8 pastries, I only managed to eke out four.

The second downside of this is that they were too thick and doughy and took longer to bake and had a poor proportion of filling.

Speaking of filling, this was the highlight of the experience for me. Most pop tarts call for jams or preserves as filling and while I wanted to keep the sweet fruity feel, I obviously wanted to avoid sugars in the filling. I settled on two options. Firstly, I tried a mixture of dried fruits (I used blueberries and apricots) that had been soaked in a Swerve simple syrup mixture then pureed to a paste. My second idea was to simmer a coffee liquor to remove the alcohol (you could leave it in for an adult treat in the evenings) and mixed it together with ground almonds to a texture similar to peanut butter. I’m not sure what else I could do with this combination but I was quite happy simply eating it with a spoon!

Yes, of course there are still naturally occurring sugars in both of these, I wouldn’t recommend them for all diets.

It’s sometimes good to make mistakes like this. Not only does it force you to really think about your process rather than blindly following a recipe, it takes away that layer of overconfidence that sometimes overtakes bakers like me. A little humility in the kitchen goes a long way.

Hiya, Sweeties!

I thought it was time to dust the flour out of my hair and fill you in on some happenings in the Swerve Test Kitchen and beyond.

Lately, we’ve been on the road a lot sharing the sweetness with lots of new friends. It’s funny; when we’re up to our eyeballs in Swerve (almost literally) we sometimes forget just how remarkable it is. When we’re explaining Swerve to someone that hasn’t come across it before, we get excited all over again.

Most recently, we were chatting with a health and wellness blogger who is always searching for the ideal sugar alternative. She had all the usual objections to the ‘other guys’ and just hadn’t stumbled upon Swerve yet. While we told all how Swerve was all-natural and had no glycemic response, no aftertaste or cooling effect, it think what really won her over was the cupcake we gave her. I got the feeling, she hadn’t eaten a truly sugar free yet ‘regular’ tasting cupcake in years. It was a beautiful moment for her and for us!

Something else new is our 8oz shaker canister. It’s easy to use, easy to seal and takes up almost no room on your counter. Need another plus? It’s refillable. It’s available on our site and from Amazon.

http://www.swervesweetener.com/products-page

http://www.amazon.com/Swerve-Canister-8oz-Sweetener/dp/B007N7KUL2/ref=sr_1_11?ie=UTF8&qid=1332869872&sr=8-11

All of this ‘business stuff has kept us out of the kitchen a little but don’t worry, we also have some exciting new recipes coming soon. We’ll share them with y’all on Facebook and Twitter. We also love seeing all of your baking photos so keep them coming – you can always post to Facebook or email them to hello@swervesweetener.com

I’ve been having so much fun with Swerve Breakfast Month! There are so many recipes and ideas out there and most breakfast foods are easy to adapt to sugar-free. Not only that, it’s been the perfect excuse to enjoy breakfast for dinner several nights a week! Sadly, while I wish I had the time to make a gourmet breakfast each day, I’m also a fan of hitting the snooze button a few more times than necessary.

I bought myself a present recently that changed my life. It’s one of those all in one toaster-egg poacher-egg boiler-meat warmer ‘thingys’ (that’s the industry term for them, I believe).

It is truly the definition of a machine that once you have; you don’t know how you ever did without. I can make two breakfast sandwiches in no time flat or 8 perfect hard or soft boiled eggs. If that wasn’t good enough – you can ‘set it and forget it’. It turns itself off when it’s done. As I type this, I’m munching on an egg white and cheese sandwich on homemade English muffins (everyone should make their own muffins – it’s incredibly easy and delicious, I use a recipe adapted from www.allrecipes.com).

I’ve always been a breakfast eater but it was typically a refueling exercise – something to be done as quickly as possible, now, I get to indulge in a delicious hot breakfast every day without sacrificing any sleep.

One thing that’s beautiful about this machine is the attention to detail. It comes with two different shaped egg trays – round for muffins and bagels, square for bread. It has a built in storage compartment, it’s incredibly easy to wash up and it actually looks quite stylish.

If you’re currently drooling and/or jealous, you can find one on Amazon and most electronics retailers.