Sugar-Free Craisins and Faux Raisins (LC, GF, SF)

Raisins are pretty much out on this way of eating. I’ve been making these faux raisins to get me close to raisins in cooking and baking or in trail mixes, but I can’t say that “they taste just like raisins” - they don’t.

Cranberries are inherently more tart and fruity, even with a lot of flavorings and sweeteners thrown at them. The tartness will just always come through.

But the faux raisins are enough different (minimizing the tartness and fruity “edge”) once the sweeteners and flavors concentrate in the drying process and they work  nicely in most applications that usually require raisins!

A word about glycerine. I listed it as an optional ingredient and the photos will show you why. You can make these recipes perfectly fine without it, but without the glycerine, the end product tends to be a little more “leathery” and less plump. The taste is not affected at all.

In addition the glycerine also prevents the erythritol from recrystallizing, so I do recommend using it!

 

Faux Raisins

{No Glycerine used in these!}

Ingredients:

2 lbs. of fresh or frozen cranberries

1/2 cup of sugar-free  syrup (or equivalent - you could even go with more stevia, but add 1/2 cup of water)

1tsp stevia extract (or more)

2 tsp yacon syrup

1 1/2 tsp Nature’s Flavors’ Raisin Flavor Concentrate (optional)

1 cup erythritol, powdered

1/2  tsp vanilla oil (for heat applications)

2 tbsp. glycerine (optional but makes for a more authentic drying “plumpness”)

 

Preparation:

Preheat the oven to 200ºF.

You might choose to cut the cranberries in half, to speed up the process and to get more of the sweeteners into the berry. If so, cut cooking time to 5 minutes and drying time by 2 hours or so.

Add berries, syrups, flavoring and sweeteners to a skillet and cook on high for 5-10 minutes (frozen will take longer) or until most of the berries have popped. Stir them around every once in a while.

Take the skillet off the heat and squish the berries a little with the back of a spoon to get any that didn’t pop. Don’t worry if it looks more like cranberry sauce than individual berries. Stir in the glycerin if using.

Set aside to cool for about 15 minutes. Stir in the vanilla oil/flavoring.

Cover the baking sheet with three layers of paper towel, then one layer of parchment paper. This will soak up any escaping liquid and prevent it from making a mess of your baking sheet.

Spread the cranberries somewhat evenly on the parchment paper. If you find any cranberries that didn't pop, pop them now.

Place the baking sheet in the oven. Turn the heat down to 170ºF. Bake for 4 hours.

After 4 hours, check the berries. Replace the paper towels and parchment with fresh layers. It helps speed things up a bit if you pick off the cranberry pieces and transfer them to a new set of layers. Place back in the oven to dry more.

The berries will be done in about 8 hours total. The final time depends on your local levels of humidity, and on how dry you want the finished product. I prefer to have them not too dry and leathery!

Store in a zip lock bag. They can also be frozen for several months.

 

Note: If you have a dehydrator, use the fruit leather sheets initially and  then after about 3-4 hours drying time, pick the berries off and place them on the regular dehydrator trays to finish off.

Alternatively you could just do them on the dehydrator sheets and cut the resulting fruit leather into pieces.

Same goes for the oven method. If you are not too concerned about having individual berries, you could just let the whole thing dry in one sheet and then pull/cut it apart into pieces later.

 

The whole batch comes to 125g of carbs, 38 g of fiber = 87g of net carbs

The batch makes about 2 1/2 cups of faux raisins at  2.2g of net carbs per tablespoon.

 

 

Sugar-Free Craisins

 

{I used Glycerine for these!}

Ingredients:

2 lbs. of fresh or frozen cranberries, halved

1/2 cup of sugar-free syrup, unflavored (or raspberry, strawberry)

1/2 tsp stevia extract (more if you like them sweeter)

1 cup erythritol, powdered

2 tbsp. glycerine

 

Preparation:

Preheat the oven to 200ºF.

Add berries and sweeteners to a skillet and cook on high for 5 minutes to soften the berries a little. Stir them around every once in a while.

Take the skillet off the heat, stir in the glycerin (if using) and set aside to cool for about 15 minutes.

Cover the baking sheet with three layers of paper towel, then one layer of parchment paper. This will soak up any escaping liquid.

Spread the cranberries somewhat evenly on the parchment paper.

Place the baking sheet in the oven. Turn the heat down to 170ºF. Bake for 3 hours.

After 4 hours, check the berries. Replace the paper towels and parchment with fresh layers if necessary. Roughly separate any clumps. You don’t have to be too worried about a few sticking together. They’ll come apart later, but avoid big clumps. Place back in the oven to bake. Give them some room if possible. If you need to, use two lined cookie sheets.

The berries will be done in about 9 hours total. The final time depends on your local levels of humidity, and on how dry you want the finished product. I prefer to have these a little dryer than the faux raisins.

Store in a zip lock bag. They can also be frozen for several months.

Note: If you have a dehydrator, use the fruit leather sheets initially and then after about 3-4 hours drying time, pick the berries off and place them on the regular dehydrator trays to finish off.

 

The whole batch makes about 2 1/2 cups and  comes to 118g of carbs and 38g of fiber = 80g of net carbs. That makes them 2g of net carbs per tbsp.