what is being used to replace the sugar – sometimes the type of sugar replacer is a very important thing to know to determine how to fix the problem.

if it’s maltitol, then i’d suggest one of two things – simply add 5% cocoa butter (mycryo is just very expensive cocoa butter), or add 0.2% fluid lecithin. what you’re likely seeing is that the product is either old or has been stored improperly, and has picked up moisture from the air, causing it to thicken.

If it’s isomalt, there’s a good chance you’re heating it too high, and you’ll need to treat it very gently as well as do one of the two above things.

It has a very strong cooling effect (it’s heat of soln is -35 C/g), it has the same relative sweetness of sucrose, it’s not very heat stable (meaning it’ll be a disaster if someone were to try to make chocolate out of it), it has 2.4C/g nutritional value, a GI of 13, is moderatly hygroscopic, well tolerated, pretty expensive, and that you probably couldn’t buy any now if you wanted to (there’s a worldwide shortage of the stuff)…

“best” is a tricky word each individual will have their own definition of what best is…

given that, i’ll run through the most popular options:
1) maltitol:
Pros – decent flavor, processes well.
Cons – it’s GI is relatively high (35), and has relatively poor tolerance

2) isomalt
Pros – probably best in class for flavor, good GI (13). i find it best if you combine it with a little bit of fiber.
Cons – hard to find anhydrous, which is what you’ll need to process it. tolerance is comparable to maltitol

3) erythritol
Pros – best in class for both tolerance and GI
Cons – has a very strong cooling effect. you’ll need to blend it with a fiber of some sort to offset the cooling effect (most fibers have a warming effect). Try inulin, polydextrose, or nutriose. There are lots of different types of each of these fibers; you’ll need to experiment with which blends suit your needs.