Will sugar alcohols thicken a sorbet? It’s sorbet season again, and the local Lidl started stocking xylitol, which made me wonder: could you reduce the calories in a sorbet by using a sugar alcohol instead of (some of) the other sugar?
I usually use all invert syrup for sorbets in my super cheap churn, but I’m not sure how much leeway I have despite its excellent thickening power. How do sugar alcohols compare to sugar when it comes to binding water?
Well, I got around to braving this and potentially sacrificing a box of strawberries at ‘rona prices, and going half xylitol half syrup at ~25% added sugars of total it turned out… fine. Not as creamy as using all syrup but not sandy the way my early all sugar batches did - at a guess, it behaved barely different from table sugar for me. 1 part substitute : 2 parts syrup might be better, but at that point it seems like mostly a pointless complication and expense - xylitol has 60% the calories of sugar, cutting the calories of the sorbet by all of 13%.