It’s been a relatively long journey getting to the point where I enjoy my coffee with a little sweetener of some kind. I think it just brightens it a wee bit and aids some of the high notes, but I could just be fooling myself.
The thing is, I have also come to dislike sucrose. So, what to do.
Honey won’t do. It adds a flavor I find doesn’t agree with my coffee preferences.
“Stevia”? Oh, please-ia, no. It’s sort of OK in cold things, but coffee? Nuh-uh.
Aspartame? Emphatically no! That stuff’s just nasty!
Saccharin? In its calcium and potassium salts formulations, it’s not half bad. Sort of almost OK. Will do in a pinch, though it seems to add a slightly bitter aftertaste, in my mouth.
Sucralose? The recent Italian study that found a “high” incidence of leukemia in cancer-prone mice when they were fed “varying” (read, “varying excessively high”) doses of sucralose from birth doesn’t concern me. IMO, from what I could see from the abstract and what little other material from the study was freely available, the “researchers” should be flogged, tarred, feathered and run out of whatever town they seek to dwell in. JMO, of course. YMMV. But as to its use in coffee (an anti-carcinogenic beverage :-)), it is just about right, IMO. It’s sweet in hot stuff, doesn’t actually do anything to cancel out the lovely acidic nip of coffee, and has a “mouth” that approximates sucrose without the offensive stickiness. High/flowery notes in the coffee seem more pronounced with its use. Sucralose wins the race.
When I want to be really fancy-schmancy, I add some heavy cream (NO “CREAMER” EVER!!! *gagamaggot*), sprinkle a bit of ground cinnamon on top (or use a cinnamon “stick” as a stirer), froth it with a whisk, and drink up.
Lovely.
Sidebar:
A bonus? I like the fact that sucralose was discovered/invented by a guy who was trying to create a new insecticide. He noticed that while the bugs fed sucralose were dying, it was taking a really, really long time. More research. Nope. The insects were not being poisoned. They were dying of starvation, because they ate the super-sweet sucralose preferentially, avoiding other, nutritious, foods.
As a result, I also use sucralose in my own “insect powder” devised of sucralose, a very wee tad of cornstarch and boric acid, whirred together in a food processor. Kills crawling insects effectively and is much, much safer to use than most commercial preparations.