On 2/7/2021 at 9:53 PM, scott123 said:I've been working with and researching alternative/artificial sweeteners for 17 years. What you're describing, a viable sugar free chocolate bar, would take an R&D department and at least $500K to develop. There's not an edible sugar free chocolate bar on the market that hasn't devoted these kinds of resources towards development. And even throwing that much money at the problem, the bars are never that good- forget about any kind of snap.
Unless you can keep erythritol dissolved, it will not only have that horrible cooling effect that @jimb0 described, it will provide very little sweetness. Also, because of it's minuscule molecular structure, it doesn't really provide any of the sugary texture/bulk that you would want a sweetener to provide.
Polysaccharide are somewhat effective at keeping erythritol dissolved, and, as the thermometer goes up, perhaps a small amount of erythritol could be kept in a glassy state with a hard polydextrose stage- that might be able to be used as a powder. But polysaccharides are insanely hygroscopic- and I've never heard of anyone doing this.
This is absolutely a 'mud track to nowhere.'
A sugar free ganache, though, that might be feasible.
a lot of the big hippy brands of SF chocolate (like lily's) use inulin, poly-D, and/or dextrin for bulk and erythritol plus/or a super sweetener for the rest of it. they aren't as hard as a standard sucrose bar, but they're not terrible. i just hate inulin personally. their white chocolate, on the other hand, is awful. so much recrystallized erythritol that it actually affects the texture.
i don't think it would require $500k to figure this out, and certainly not a whole department. a little scientific acumen and a few weekends would be enough for a small-time chocolatier to put out a reasonable product. i just think most big companies don't care to spend the resources because the roi mostly isn't there for them.
