How to Make Stevia Extract
Liquid Ingredients:
Stevia Leaves (fresh or dried)
Neutral Vodka
A Jar
Pull the stevia leaves off the branches, put them into the jar, cover them with vodka. For best flavor, chop the stevia leaves before putting them in the ja. Let the leaves steep in vodka for about 2 days, any longer and the extract can get bitter. Once the extract is complete, filter out the leaves and bottle the stevia extract in an amber dropper bottle. A dark bottle is recommended as light can break down the compounds more quickly. One pint will last a family of four all year. This recipe is very shelf stable and won’t go bad for years.
Powder To dry stevia, you can use a couple of methods. Cut the stems and bundle them together with garden twine. Hang them upside down in a cool, dark place out of direct sunlight. Once dried, strip the leaves from the stem as only the leaves have the sweetness. Other drying options include removing the leaves from the stems and spreading them on a non-metal screen outdoors with plenty of air circulation. A day in the sun should suffice. You can use a food dehydrator, or even an oven on low - 140 degrees for about 20 minutes. Once they’re dry enough to completely crumble in your hands, they’re ready.
The next step, is to turn the leaves into a powder. The easiest way to do this is a clean coffee grinder, one of those tiny cheap blade grinders. It’s important that it’s never been used, not even once, to grind coffee as this will over power any other herbs you grind in it. A food processor will also work.
Since homemade stevia powder is actually powdered stevia, instead of lab-made powdered erythritol flavored with stevia, it takes considerably more in to get the same effect in recipes calling for stevia. It’s still much sweeter than sugar, and you only need about 1/8 to 1/4 cup of homemade stevia powder to replace a cup of sugar.
