Cooking with Stevia vs Splenda?

Tonight I had a craving for pudding.  (Well, what I really wanted was cookies, but I was willing to settle for warm tapioca pudding.) I have made it before with Splenda, but I didn't have enough Splenda, so I mixed Splenda and stevia (about half and half).  It ended up being somewhat bitter and didn't set properly.

Anyone have any idea why? Temperature, maybe?  I routinely use the stevia in hot tea and have never noticed any bitterness, but the tea isn't boiling hot whereas the pudding has to be brought to a full boil.

It was very disappointing!  

Lora

I can imagine how disappointing that was.  Although, I can't answer why this happened, I do have a question for you.  Being newly post op I have been trying to find new ways of cooking to be healthier.  I have worked with Splenda; however, hearing so much on how bad artificial sugar is for you I am reluctant to use it.  What is your take on that?  I have been searching the web today for no sugar/artificial sweetener recipes with no luck.  They all have honey or fruit juice in them, which I won't do this soon out.  I was looking for recipes using applesauce or bananas for sweetness.  Anyway, whats your thoughts on this?

I will be honest and tell you that during my entire first year post-op, I ate a lot of very simple, less than 3 ingredient foods.  (Holidays were a notable exception.) I didn't make casseroles or baked goods of any kind, so finding other ways to sweeten things just wasn't an issue.  I found that it was much easier to keep "on plan" with simple foods.

I generally use stevia for the small amounts of sweetener I use in things like tea, but Splenda is a sugar based sweetener, so I personally don't worry about using it for the occasional times that I need to use a sugar substitute.  The 16 ounce bag of Splenda that I just used up last night was purchased in November of 2012, so that's how little I use.

I'm not sure how much that really helps you, because basically my answer is that if it needed sweetener in it, I usually didn't eat it even with a sugar substitute.  I am more leased about that now at 6.5 years out, but I still only make foods that require a recipe occasionally a hd most of them are casseroles so don't require sugar.

Natural sweeteners still contain as lot of sugar. There are books on backing with stevia and there were as lot of websites 

http://www.steviva.com/stevia_recipes.html

Was the Splenda a little old, I find if you don't use it right away it gets bitter.  I never found a brand of Stevia I liked and do use Splenda for artificial sweetener when I use it, but I rarely cook with it.

Yeah, it was over a year old.  I bought it to make a dessert for thanksgiving 2012...

I've just made the SF Jello instant pudding with unsweetened almond milk and a scoop of protein powder and it was actually really good.  I've added PB2 also.  I've never used a sweetener with it.

Unfortunately, I have never found a SF tapioca pudding mix (and I'm not a huge fan of other puddings).

Even with the "minute tapioca" (not my first choice, but sometimes you just cannot wait to soak the real tapioca beads overnight!), you have to make it from scratch (egg, milk, sweetener, vanilla)... but that's the only way when you want warm, comforting pudding, anyway.

That's interesting.  Those puddings aren't suppose to set properly without real milk; I think the box even says so.  So this works for you?  Perhaps the protein powder was whey and it contained the ingredients that react with the pudding mix.

Chulbert I make them all the time with almond milk.  I just use half the amount of milk called for and it sets up just fine. I almost always add a scoop of protein powder with it too.