Sugar vs. sweeteners

What is it?

Scene 2 of the formulator, "How shall we sweeten your chocolate?", offers two options: With sugar and With sweeteners. The choice changes the ingredients that provide the sweetness and, therefore, the lines you see in the resulting composition.

With sugar (classic formulation)

• Uses sugar (sucrose) as the only sweet phase.
• Standard, familiar sensory behavior.
• Classic labeling.

Recommended when the brand or the customer asks for traditional chocolate, without dietary claims.

With sweeteners

Replaces sugar with a sweetener blend that splits the sweet phase across three roles:

• Bulk — provides the volume and body of the sweet phase, with moderate sweetness.
• Complementary — adjusts the profile and offsets the bulk's texture.
• High intensity — tenths of a gram of a very potent sweetener that bring the blend up to the target sweetness.

The "How do we sweeten without sugar?" panel explains it on screen: the substitution is never 1:1 in sweetness, and the app calculates each blend's equivalence against the same weight of sugar and adjusts the split to bring it close to 100%.

The six blends

Under "Choose your sweetener blend" there are six cards. Each one shows its sweeteners by role, its sweetness compared with sugar, and a usage note:

The Use the recommended one button picks the Workshop classic. If you don't choose any blend, the app applies that same one and tells you with the notice "We used the classic workshop blend: erythritol as bulk, xylitol as complementary and monk fruit as the high-intensity sweetener".

The cards with allulose or monk fruit also carry a regulatory note: "Allulose: pending approval in the EU (approved in the US and LATAM)" and "Monk fruit: aqueous extract approved in the EU since 2024".

In the result

With sweeteners, the Recommended values show each sweetener on its own line in grams, with its role (Bulk, Complementary, High intensity), plus a chip with the sweetness achieved ("Sweetness ≈ N% of the sugar equivalent"). In addition:

• If the formula includes a high-intensity sweetener, the app reminds you that it's dosed in hundredths of a gram and that you need a precision scale (0.01 g).
• At some cocoa percentages the high-intensity sweetener is optional: if the bulk and complementary sweeteners already reach the target sweetness, the app leaves it out and explains why with a note.

When to choose each one

What changes in the formula?

If you switch between With sugar and With sweeteners while keeping the same type and the same cocoa percentage, the cocoa mass and cocoa butter stay in similar proportions: what changes is that the sugar line is split among the sweeteners of the chosen blend.