"AgaveNectar" news and stories

Chill Soda is a low glycemic organic soda touted as a healthier alternative to other carbonated drinks.

The drink Chill Soda was featured on ABC's TV show "Shark Tank." It's an organic soda that comes in four flavors: chill guava, chill kola, chill limon and chill pome. It has 85 calories and is sweetened with agave nectar. Chill Soda is based in Sausalito, Calif.

Somer Perez learned from the best: just out of high school, she started working at New York City's Beacon bar-restaurant with master mixologist Audrey Saunders. After Saunders left, Perez took over as the Beacon's head barkeep, moving on to claim the title of beverage director first at the Hotel on Rivington and then at the Royalton Hotel, where she became known for innovative, seasonally driven cocktails.

Now the consulting mixologist at Elizabeth, another Gotham restaurant, and the head of her own consulting company, Perez continues to experiment with both classic and trendy ingredients, including agave nectar.

Here, she talks about how the benefit of using the natural sweetener (which comes from the agave plant and has a lower glycemic index than regular sugar) in her elixirs, and parts with an exclusive sparkling pear cocktail recipe.

I first heard of agave nectar five years ago, when a friend of mine went off of wheat and sugar simultaneously. She struggled with the lack of wheat in her diet but thanks to agave nectar, didn't have much trouble staying away from sugar and sweets. She became something of an agave booster and talked it up to anyone who would listen. I became a slow adopter, and began to use agave nectar to sweeten my tea and morning bowls of oatmeal.

I've always wanted to to explore baking with agave nectar, but until now, I'd never had the correct resource (and I worried that trying to use it with one of my sugar-based recipes would be inviting disaster). Enter Ania Catalano's book, Baking with Agave Nectar. This squat paperback is beautifully photographed and contains 100 recipes that all use agave as their primary sweetener. Catalano became interested in agave nectar when she was diagnosed with hypoglycemia and needed to find a sugar substitute that tasted good and wouldn't spike her blood sugar levels the way that processed sugar, honey and maple syrup did.

One of the things I appreciate about this book is that Catalano doesn't just replace sugar with agave nectar. She is careful to incorporate whole wheat and sprouted flours into her recipes, so that when you bake her treats, you know that you are making something that will be far healthier than what you can pick up at your local bakery. In these times, when we're all looking for ways to improve the quality of the foods that we eat, this volume is a wonderful assistant in allowing you to have tasty, sweet baked goods that are good for you as well.

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Oh, how I wish I could take claim for these works of art. Alas, I cannot, so I'll be sure to thank the real artists: Clever Cupcakes of Montreal.

The company provides three cupcake choices for your indulging pleasure: classic, creative, and wholesome. Choose your classic combo from a multitude of cake, frosting, fillings and sprinkles choices; go creative a la Mario Bros.; or keep it health(ier) with the whole-grained goodness of a wholesome cake. The wholesome cakes are made with agave nectar, which has a lower glycemic index than sugar (a fancy way of saying that it won't make your blood sugar spike, resulting in those crazy sugar highs and lows).

Alas, the fresh ingredients and lack of preservatives that make these cupcakes so good is also what makes them unsuitable for shipping - so you can only enjoy them if you live in the Montreal area (or have a really good friend who's willing to send them to you).

Be like Creative Cupcakes and post your photos on the Slashfood's Flickr Photo Pool. C'mon, you know you want to. Everybody's doin' it...