I looked at the ingredients for both. Watkins root beer concentrate is: water,sugar, alcohol & natural flavors. Lorann is: water, caramel color, propylene glycol, artificial flavor, polysorbate 80,potassium sorbate. If you are interested, Watkins website is www.Watkins1868.com
Root beer was traditionally made of a combination of various roots and the bark of a variety of sassafras tree, and sometimes the root of the sarsaparilla vine. It's pretty much an American drink, and can be either alcoholic or not. Now days the formulation is a bit different, but the flavor is closely related. Your extract is good for baking, candy making or for adding to drinks- alcoholic or not. If you wanted to, you could make your own hard candies with it. Whatever you opt to use it for, keep in mind that Lorann flavorings tend to be pretty concentrated, so it's best to use a few drops first, taste and then decide if you want or need to add more. You won't want to add it in by the teaspoon, but rather by the eyedropper. Consider it a flavoring you would use much like any other - like vanilla or almond.
Thanks for the info. Since I have a fairly large bottle of the Lorann product, I'll try that first and be judicious while adding it. I often make root beer caramels and I use an entire tablespoon of Lorann's flavoring to achieve the level of root beer flavor that I want. I know their products are concentrated, but since it takes 1 full T in the caramel recipe, I will play with it for the cookies. I know that Lorann also makes candy flavoring that is super concentrated and sold in 1 dram bottles. That's a horse of a different color, methinks. Thank you for the recipe and i'll report back after they're made.
So that we are both referring to the same ingredient, Lorann makes both an oil (usually sold as a candy flavoring and comes in a tiny 1 dram bottle) and a flavoring (which has no oil and is usually sold in a 4 oz or 8 oz bottle). My original query had to do with the difference between a concentrate and a flavoring. It appears Lorann describes their product as a flavoring rather than a concentrate, which was my original confusion. I'm still not 100% clear on whether the Lorann "FLAVORING" will yield the same results as the Watkins "CONCENTRATE". I'll report back with my results.
Welllll, I made the cookies with my Root Beer Flavoring from Loran Oils. I trust the flavoring as I've used it many, many times to make rootbeer caramels.I baked the cookies for 12 minutes. In retrospect, they needed another 2 minutes in my opinion. They are so soft that they crumble rather easily. I prefer my cookies to be chewy, but not fall apart when you pick it up. Anyway, the cookies were ok, but I found them a little too sweet, especially with the white chocolate chips. Not sure about the rootbeer flavor... jury is still out. :-)
/5b1cd463-6e5c-4fd3-9f07-a3b61ce68d42--IMG_5469-1.jpg)
8 Comments
Lorann is: water, caramel color, propylene glycol, artificial flavor, polysorbate 80,potassium sorbate.
If you are interested, Watkins website is www.Watkins1868.com