Hot stuff!

Last night Rachel made pancakes for dinner and since I can't exactly eat pancakes right now, she was a sweetheart and mixed up some special pancakes for me using almond flour and monk fruit sweetener. Andrew did his best to make a simple syrup from the monk fruit sweetener. 

But here's the thing: 

Erythritol-based crystallized monk fruit sweeteners don't dissolve like regular sugar. So while he made a syrup of sorts, it wasn't quite like actual syrup. It began recrystallizing the minute it stopped boiling, but I decided to try it on my pancakes anyway. 

Here's another thing about monk fruit sweetener:

Evidently, although they don't dissolve well, they do hold heat well. A little too well. 

I figured that the syrup had been sitting out long enough (long enough to recrystallize!) and thought that after I had drizzle/clumped it onto my pancakes that it would be safe enough to consume. Like regular syrup, right?

Hot sugar holds heat. I know this. Syrup gets hot. Hotter than boiling water can. 

But it also cools off. 

Evidently not so with monk fruit sweetener. 

I took a bite of pancake, with my monk fruit sweetener glob on top, stuck it in my mouth and...immediately regretted it.

That stuff was molten lava! 

The roof of my mouth is miserable. 

I have blisters all from the heat (they've been peeling all day; it's absolutely disgusting). 

I left the syrup alone after that. And when it was time to clean up from dinner, the bowl it was in was too hot to handle without a hot-pad! Still!

So be warned! If you're going to make your own monk fruit syrup, use liquid sweetener, not crystal sweetener. Or just busy some at the store pre-made (I think that's our next move).