I have just started my journey with stevia. The one plant I got a few months ago (I need more) just isn’t enough for all the experimenting I need to do in order to fully incorporate this wonderful plant into my diet. From all the reading I have been doing, it seems the best way to use the stevia plant as a sweetener is as an extract. This E-How article explains it perfectly:
http://www.ehow.com/how_2083187_make-stevia-extract.html
It seems the key to eliminate the bitterness is to limit the time the plant material is in the alcohol. While there are directions out there that use water instead of alcohol, it seems the alcohol pulls out the sweet elements of the plant more efficiently.
So, once I have the extract, how will I use it? I found this conversion in this .pdf:
http://www.itascanaturopathicclinic.com/Stevia___FOS_Recipes_00000.pdf
Now, I did make a coffee drink with stevia (this is where my leaves have gone so far) but I tripled the amount of stevia called for and it still wasn’t sweet enough for me (so I added a little Splenda). It also uses water, which from what I’ve read does not extract enough sweetness. Here’s the coffee drink:
So, onward and upward. I will be purchasing a few more stevia plants this week and we’ll see how things go!