SUGAR How Much Is Too Much? The American Heart Association recommends no more than 6 teaspoons (25 grams) of added sugar a day for women and 9 teaspoons (36 grams) of added sugar a day for men. But the average American gets way more: 22 teaspoons a day (88 grams).
Four tablespoons of granulated sugar is going to be a minimum of 4 × 6 = 24 drops of the monk fruit or stevia extract.
I've probably already asked you this before, but let me ask you again. If you are genuinely interested in Eating Healthier, then why are you so focused on dessert(s)? And why isn't dessert a simple fruit or a trail mix of nuts and seeds? 28 pages of dessert recipes, and counting. Really?
Since I wasn't going to be using Swerve Confectioner or Granulated Splenda, I decided to base what I did on the first recipe, which depended more heavily on cocoa powder than did the other two. But since I didn't want a lot of frosting—not to mention the fact that I did not have 1½ cups of butter—I decided to cut the recipe in half. Unfortunately, I forgot to add only five tablespoons of cocoa powder instead of ten. As a result, I had to separate what I ended up with into two parts and continue experimenting with only half of it, which means that none of the amounts I will be referring to will be accurate... That said, to get the icing to approximate the expected consistency (I didn't want to be hassling with heavy whipping cream, which is why I added cream cheese) required my doubling the amount of cream cheese (eight tablespoons instead of four), and to cut the bitterness of the cocoa powder, I needed at least twice as much stevia or monk fruit extract... like 48 drops instead of 24. But even then, I still wasn't quite satisfied with the flavor, so tomorrow I'm going to have to go out and purchase some unsweetened chocolate and/or sugar-free chocolate chips to mix into what I already have to see if that gives the frosting whatever flavor it seems to still be lacking.
Some people like to have dessert once in awhile without being completely anal about it. Life is short. Fruit is not dessert. Nuts are not dessert. And seeds are for birds to eat. Come on Frederick, lighten up a bit and live once in awhile.
Neither of the stores I went to in my immediate neighborhood had unsweetened chocolate. So, the best I could do was Enjoy Life Morsels, which lists unsweetened chocolate and cane sugar as its ingredients, which seems kind of stupid to me, because once you add the cane sugar, the chocolate is no longer unsweetened.. After I mixed in ¼ cup of the chocolate chips, melted, to the frosting I started on yesterday, it was close enough to "normal" that I went ahead and spread it (in a manner of speaking) on the cake I made at the end of last week. However, I still plan to do more experimenting with these ingredients.
This might or might not work, based on what you were working with the first time around... 3 tbsp cocoa powder 4 tbsp cream cheese (made from organic cashews and coconut cream) ¼ cup sugar-free chocolate chips (melted) ½ cup butter (room temperature/softened) ½ tsp vanilla extract ½ tsp stevia or monk fruit extract (equal to 48 drops or 8 tbsp granulated sugar)