RECIPE: DIY Stevia Extract

Note: This recipe is taken from New Life On a Homestead.com

You’ll need a fair amount of leaves to get any goodly amount of extract. If you have one small plant, it might not bear much. If you have a larger one, closer to a bush, like mine, or several plants, you should be fine.

Step 1: Take the leaves off the plant and wash them. Hopefully this step is self-explanatory, but just in case it’s not…fill your sink with cold water and swish the leaves around in it. Drain the sink and then repeat the process with more cold water.

WASH THE LEAVES!

Step 2: Discard the stems of the leaves and use a salad spinner (I like this one) to remove as much water or other excess moisture as is possible. At this time you can also remove any leaves that are brown, etc that you may have missed before. If the leaves have a few brown spots, don’t worry about it.

Step 3: In a medium sized pot, get 2 cups of water almost to a boil. Be sure not to bring it to a full boil, as this can damage the Stevia. Add 1 cup of slightly bruised leaves (they will probably be bruised already from the washing and spinning if you go through those steps), and remove the pot from the heat. Cover, and allow to steep for about an hour.

Step 4: Using a coffee filter (a permanent one works best and lots of us have Keurigs so this works well), strain the liquid into a clean container. It’ll be a nice, greenish color.

Store your Stevia extract in a lockable glass container in the fridge for up to 2 weeks. It’s recommended that you store the extract in a dark container, but I didn’t have one so I put my jar in a brown paper bag instead.

Before putting my finished product up, we all tasted a sample of it. Whew, was it SWEET!

Need recipe ideas for stevia extract? Try here: Mother Earth News – there’s no need to buy the book of recipes, as the page contains several. Additionally, Pinterest (shocking, huh?) has a ton of recipes. Try searching for “Stevia recipes”.

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