Plain coffee or tea isn’t everyone’s thing. However, most store-bought creamers aren’t healthy, especially if you are trying to minimize your consumption of sugars.
Fortunately, you can easily sweeten your drinks with homemade stevia coffee creamer. This easy recipe will likely become a go-to!
Why should you use a coffee creamer with stevia?
The ketogenic diet, often referred to as keto, minimizes carbohydrates and allows plenty of healthy fats. It was originally invented to help people with epilepsy, but it has since become a popular method of losing weight. The idea is that your body will burn fat for fuel if it doesn’t have carbs to burn.
Sounds great, right? Well, if you use plenty of store-bought coffee creamer to add a sweet taste and creamy texture to your morning coffee, you have a problem. Coffee creamer typically contains plenty of sugar — a carbohydrate you try to avoid!
Stevia is a popular alternative to real sugar because the way the human body metabolizes it results in an intake of zero calories. Also, people with diabetes may find that swapping stevia for sugar helps regulate their blood sugar levels. Any serious health condition like diabetes should be discussed with your doctor, but you can ask your doctor whether stevia suits you.
Who shouldn’t use coffee creamer with stevia
Of the non-sugar sweeteners on the market, stevia is one of the safer ones. It doesn’t have the controversial reputation of artificial sweeteners like aspartame, erythritol, or sucralose (Splenda). It’s made from the leaves of a plant, Stevia rebaudiana, so it’s a natural sweetener.
That said, nothing is without problems, and the benefits of stevia must be weighed against a few risks. The stevia plant is biologically related to ragweed, so people sensitive to ragweed pollen should be cautious when consuming stevia until they know they tolerate it well.
Furthermore, stevia can cause digestive discomfort in some people. Mood swings and other mental health symptoms have also been reported in association with stevia. Take it slow at first — make sure stevia agrees with you before you consume large amounts of it!
What do you add to stevia to make coffee creamer?
Deciding what will be the base of your stevia creamer will depend on the dietary needs that are driving you to make a sugar-free creamer in the first place. Sometimes it’s as simple as wanting a healthier product with non-GMO ingredients. For example, International Delight creamers contain palm oil, which some people prefer to avoid for health and environmental reasons.
If the main issue is that you want to get away from the artificial flavorings and additives of commercial creamers, your options are wide open. Heavy cream is, of course, the gold standard for achieving creaminess. It’s high in fat but low in carbs, making it keto-friendly. Stevia, cream, milk, and any additional flavors you prefer will make a simple, gluten-free creamer that tastes great.
The keto diet doesn’t exclude dairy, but it is against sugar. Milk contains sugar in the form of lactose, although heavy cream does not have this problem. When you look at the nutrition facts on the labels of milk and cream, you’ll see the difference.
To make a keto creamer, combine heavy cream with almond, cashew, or coconut milk and add liquid stevia and other flavors. Even half and half is more keto-friendly than milk, as it’s half cream, so that’s one option for your mix.
Not all non-dairy milk substitutes are created equal in this regard — for example, oat milk is packed with carbs! Read the protein, fat, and carbs labels carefully as you select your milk.
How to make stevia coffee creamer
Making a stevia creamer, you’ll enjoy is not difficult at all! You need a few basic ingredients and a jar to shake them up in. The amounts of the ingredients can be doubled or otherwise multiplied to make a bigger batch of creamer.
Easy Stevia Coffee Creamer Recipe
This simple, sugar-free recipe will show you how to make a delicious stevia coffee creamer at home. You can always jazz it up with your favorite flavors or make substitutions to accommodate additional dietary needs.
Ingredients
- 1 cup milk (or non-dairy milk substitute)
- 1/3 cup heavy cream
- 1/8 teaspoon liquid stevia
- 1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
Instructions
- Put all ingredients together in a jar.
- Shake the jar.
- Pour into black coffee or cold brew to taste.
- Leftover creamer can be refrigerated until the expiration date of the milk used to make it.
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Working with powdered stevia
Although a bottle of liquid stevia will make these creamer recipes easiest, sometimes you can only acquire powdered stevia. One packet of powdered stevia is equivalent to 1/4 teaspoon of liquid stevia. To prevent a grainy texture in your creamer, you may want to mix the powdered stevia in a little bit of water to get it to dissolve before you combine it with the other ingredients.
Stevia coffee creamer variations
The best part of making coffee creamer at home is that you can change the base recipe above to satisfy your taste buds. You can use your favorite flavored creamers for inspiration and try to mimic them. Depending on the flavor you decide to make, you may want to omit the vanilla extract.
You have a couple of options for customizing your creamer recipe. The easiest is flavored stevia. Sometimes it is sold with flavors like peppermint, cinnamon, or hazelnut already added. Using that instead of regular stevia can create the effect you seek.
For more complex creations, you’ll need to use flavor extracts. Extracts based on oils may not mix well with other ingredients, so those based on alcohol or glycerin are usually a safer bet.
Cinnamon dolce is a mixture of cinnamon and sugar. Cinnamon-flavored stevia is ideal for this task. Otherwise, add 1/4 teaspoon of cinnamon extract to the other ingredients.
Salted caramel stevia can be a great help in making a salted caramel stevia creamer. If you don’t have that, use caramel flavor in addition to the stevia. Omit the vanilla extract and replace it with 1/4 teaspoon salt. Heating the mixture in a saucepan may aid in dissolving the salt. Alternatively, you can use 1/4 teaspoon of liquid salt.
Red velvet cake consists of layers of vanilla cake with cocoa powder and cream cheese frosting. To mimic this, keep the vanilla extract in the base recipe. Then, either use chocolate stevia or add 1/4 teaspoon of chocolate extract. You can also add a splash of red food coloring if you like the look of it.
French vanilla is a great flavor for stevia coffee creamer. The difference between French vanilla and regular vanilla flavor is that French vanilla refers to custard thickened with egg yolks. Some have approximated this flavor in coffee by combining vanilla and hazelnut flavors. Use hazelnut-flavored stevia or add 1/4 teaspoon hazelnut extract to your mix.
Adjustments for different diets
Some dietary needs will require more complex ingredient adjustments to the basic stevia creamer recipe above. You may need to experiment a bit to make it taste good.
Dairy-free coffee creamer
The paleo diet is similar in many ways to the keto diet, but it typically excludes dairy products altogether, which keto does not. While the basic stevia creamer recipe works with non-dairy milk, replacing the cream is more challenging if you need to cut dairy entirely.
Coconut cream, commonly used in vegan and lactose-free desserts for its creaminess, is one option for your stevia creamer. Due to its thickness, you can combine it with water instead of a milk substitute in a 1:1 ratio.
However, coconut cream has some significant quirks to be aware of. Even in hot weather, it is too thick to blend with a spoon, a milk frother, or an immersion blender. You will need to put it in a tank blender set on liquify to combine it successfully with the other ingredients of your homemade creamer.
When you take leftover creamer made with coconut cream out of the fridge, you might need to put it in the blender again — it gets so hard that even letting it sit and then shaking it doesn’t recombine the layers.
Another option would be using coconut or MCT oil instead of cream in the basic recipe. This would maintain the creamy texture without the disadvantages of coconut cream. Start with a one-tablespoon of oil and add more as needed. You may need to first melt the coconut oil in a small pot over heat.
Whether you use coconut cream or coconut oil to thicken your dairy-free creamer, coconut milk will be the smoothest flavor pairing.
Stevia intolerance
Perhaps you know you need a creamer without all the additives, but you hate what stevia does to your digestive system.
Stevia alternatives include monk fruit, which, like stevia, has no calories. You don’t need very much of it as it is much sweeter than sugar. However, monk fruit is often sold in a blend including other products like erythritol, so read the label carefully to ensure it doesn’t contain something else you can’t tolerate.
Maple syrup is not a zero-calorie food, but it has lower carbs than sugar, so it’s often used in keto cooking. Maple syrup has fewer digestive tolerance issues than alternative sweeteners. It may be a good choice if you have a sensitive stomach.
However you customize it, homemade stevia creamer can make your morning coffee taste great. Getting sweetness without adding calories will allow you to enjoy your cup of joe without guilt.
