Ultra Pure MonkFruit Extract (50g)

Pros: Good flavor, good value, easy to use once you get the hang of it, healthy alternative: low glycemic index, excellent customer service.Cons: Can be tricky to figure out at first, bag design just slightly wonky, metallic taste if you get too much, not super versatile.Reason for purchasing: My partner and I decided to look for a sugar substitute because we realized we were both eating too much sugar. He did most of the research, and landed on this specific monk fruit sweetener: Enlight Ultra Pure. I was skeptical at first—I had my heart set on the familiarity of Splenda—but I gave it a chance, and I’m glad I did!Customer service experience: Enlight sent us a troubleshooting-type email before we even received the product, explaining how to use the product, common mistakes, etc. I really appreciated that; it told me that this is a company that knows its stuff and actually cares about the customer—and it would have been frustrating to have to figure all of that out on my own, especially at this price point.Opening the package: When I got the product and opened the box, I was initially quite disappointed. I thought, “I spent that much money on this tiny bag!?” Then I tried to open the bag, and it did that thing resealable bags do so often—tearing not enough, and then far too much, falling out of your hands, and then becoming impossible to actually reseal because there isn’t enough packaging above the zipper portion to get it back open again.I lost maybe 1/4 cup of sweetener when it fell, which is a lot given how little comes in the package, and I was furious. However, I had already spent the money and opened the product, so I decided to just move forward—so I found an airtight plastic container that would fit the entire bag and moved on; again, I’m glad I did!First taste: I tasted it twice, as a tester. First, I got a tiny amount—about the size of the end of a ballpoint pen—and was shocked. It was terrible: way too sweet, and then it tasted like I was sucking on an old penny. But I remembered the email and decided to give it one more shot.This time, I stuck a spoon in the bag, then tapped off all the sweetener until there was only a residual film of the stuff that wouldn’t tap off. Then I touched just the tip of my tongue to the spoon and picked up a tiny amount of the residual film. There it was.It was sweet, delicious, and clean-tasting. At that point, I realized that this product is actually good value, because you need so little that a 50g bag lasts months.Continued use: I mostly use this in hot drinks, primarily tea and coffee, because it just doesn’t dissolve very well in colder liquids or sprinkled on solids. I used to use 3 teaspoons of Splenda per 8 oz of coffee—I only need about 1/8-1/4 teaspoon of Enlight for the same amount of coffee.Longevity: We got this at the end of May/beginning of June, 2019. It’s now August 17, 2019, and we still have about 3/4 of a bag left. That’s with using it for 3-4 cups of tea/coffee per day.Conclusion: I’ve recommended this product to several people as a hot drink sweetener, and I will continue to do so. It’s wonderful value for a wonderfully healthy alternative. However, I’d feel better about it with a more reliable resealing function, and I do wish it worked for more than hot drinks. Still, it’s easily worth the money, and it deserves five stars.

I have used this brand for years. It doesn’t have any weird aftertaste and it mixes well in hot or cold drinks. You can even use it for baking and you would need much less than you would sugar because it’s much sweeter than sugar. It’s a little expensive but it tastes better than the less expensive brands. The amount you get lasts me a long time because you don’t need much to make something sweet.

Do not underestimate the power of this sweetness. A teeny tiny bit goes a long way. It has more of an aftertaste than I expected so it wasn’t the replacement I was dreaming of, but I use half of the honey I used to for sweetness and that’s ok! Oddly enough, it dissolves less when I have a creamer in my tea first, so I always put in this powder before anything else and it dissolves like a charm.

Floods out the top of bag when opened. Careful not to inhale this stuff. Has a worse taste than ANY of at least 8 brands of stevia I have tried over many years (yes this review is for our monkfruit but stevia is all I can compare it to as far as highly concentrated sweeteners). Also more expensive than ANY sweetener per cup of sugar equivalent sweetness. Also according to chart on bag, 3/8 tsp would equal one cup of sugar but not so at all. It takes about 2 tsp to get a cup of sugar equivalent. I calculated this by making a batchof Kool-Aid without any added sweeteners. I then divided into eight 1-cup servings. I added the appropriate amount of sugar according to what I would normally use in a two quart batch. I then slowly in very tiny 1/64 of a teaspoon measurements proceeded to sweeten the other seven glasses of Kool-Aid with various sweeteners, taste testing it against the sugar sweetened Kool-Aid. based on the amounts required to sweeten 1 cup of unsweetened Kool-Aid I was able to calculate that it takes approximately 2 teaspoons of this to equal the sweetness of sugar.I'm here to tell you that the monk fruit was the most vile of all. I have heard that lakanto pure monk fruit sweetener is better, and I tend to believe it. I have purchased a couple brands of erythritol and monk fruit combinations, and the lakanto brand to me had absolutely no trace of an aftertaste from the monk fruit even when dipping strawberries in it straight, whereas one of the other brands I could tell that there was monk fruit in it by the aftertaste it left albeit not severe. it is better when mixed with erythritol but I think lakanto probably has a better pure extract and I am going to purchase that next.This stuff is non-returnable and if you end up stuck with it as I am, my suggestion is to use it in savory dishes where a little sweetness is desired. In those cases the aftertaste is mostly in detectable. However baked goods or anything sweet, forget this stuff it's nasty. you can sometimes get away with using a very small amount of the monk fruit in combination with other sweeteners if what you're making has enough spices in it to hide the monk fruit aftertaste. Again I think this is the brand. The powder is a yellowish-orange. I think it should be white if it had been extracted in a more pure method to allow a clean taste. Probably similar to the difference between buying ground up green stevia leaves versus buying pure stevia extract which comes from rebaudioside a. Good luck to anyone stuck with this product. It has been pretty good in savory dishes as I mentioned. It was pretty good in a coconut curry dish.