[Esofia]

Liquorice powder is very sweet-tasting, and to my taste it's pleasant. It's commonly used as a sweetening agent in herb and spice teas. Now, liquorice is a medicinal herb, so this wouldn't work for most people, but I happen to be in the group of people who benefit from taking liquorice medically (CFIDS/ME, low blood pressure and so forth), plus I'm not planning to eat anything made with it very often.

I'm thinking of attempting to make a carrot loaf/cake type thing (which I haven't done before) and using liquorice powder to replace some of the sugar. Does anyone have any ideas about how to go about this? I'll be using gluten free flour as I intend to freeze the portions.

[Esofia]

Today I tried using some licorice in my chocolate peanut butter balls recipe. I ended up using less than half the amount of agave syrup that I would normally use, so it's definitely a fairly potent sweetener. Instead of 2 1/2 tablespoons syrup, I used 1 tablespoon syrup and 1 teaspoon licorice powder. I should probably have used 1/2 tsp licorice, as it has a slight aftertaste, if that's the word. I think it's making my mouth water slightly? I reckon it's probably useful for cutting down the quantity of sugar, and perhaps a bit like stevia in that it's much more concentrated than sugar, and this will change the consistency of the recipe. For the chocolate balls, I just added a tablespoon more of soya milk, but if I do make this carroty thing, I'm not quite sure how that would work. At least I can see the flavour working with a carroty thing, but what do I do about the texture?