What is erythritol?

Erythritol is a sugar alcohol that is found naturally–usually in trace amounts–in grapes and some other plants. As far as I can tell, it’s the only sugar alcohol that won’t spike your blood sugar or cause diarrhea.

Everything I’m reading says that chocolate cooks better if one uses some sugar alcohols, so you’ll usually find some sort of erythritol-based sweetener in my chocolate recipes. Given the expense of erythritol, though, I only use enough to make the chocolate behave. Then I switch to something else for the rest of the “sweet.”