Everyone loves a good cocktail, but if you’re on a ketogenic diet, you might find yourself saying no to fun cocktails knowing they’re chock-full calories. Good news for you, though—enjoying your drink without your body coming out of ketosis is possible. You just have to swap out the ingredients for keto-friendly ones, starting with natural syrup. 

Most sweet cocktails are made with sugar syrup, which is a sweetener made from a one-to-one ratio of water and sugar. You can make a keto-friendly version of this by using a keto sweetener, preferably allulose monk fruit sweetener, in place of sugar. For an even more straightforward hack, just use Skinny Mixes keto and natural syrups; with all our different flavors, you can have a whole collection of delicious sugar-free and zero-calorie sweet syrups to make all sorts of yummy cocktails!

What Happens When You Use Sugar Syrup on Keto

For a ketogenic diet to be effective, you’ll want to keep your body in ketosis, a metabolic state in which your body burns fat for energy instead of carbohydrates. To do this, you must drastically reduce carbs from your diet. But does that mean that you can still consume sugar?

When you eat high amounts of sugar, your body will shift out of ketosis and go back into a state of gluconeogenesis (carbohydrate metabolism), where it will use glucose as its main source of energy. That means that you must also eliminate sugar from your diet when you’re on keto, and so you must avoid using sugary ingredients like sugar syrups, as well.

Keto Sugar Syrup Recipe

Regular sugar syrup is easy to make. It only involves two ingredients: sugar and water in an even ratio (use the same amount of water and sugar). You simply bring the water to a boil in a saucepan, then whisk in the sugar until it dissolves completely. That’s it!

Making keto sugar syrup is exactly the same, except you swap out the sugar for a keto-friendly alternative. You can use most forms of granulated sugar-free sweeteners, such as stevia or erythritol. However, these don’t dissolve too well and may add a bitter aftertaste. This is why most recipes recommend using an allulose, which dissolves in water better to make a syrup, particularly an allulose monk fruit sweetener as monk fruit brings the same delightful sweetness as sugar. If you find that your syrup is a little bit too loose, you can add a bit of xantham gum to thicken it.

You can also take your keto sugar syrup up a notch by turning it into a natural syrup, just by adding a few more ingredients. If you’re wondering how to make natural syrup, it’s the same process as making sugar syrup, except you add equal parts of a fruit, vegetable, or plant extract to the mix. For example, if you’d like to make a blueberry natural syrup, heat the same amount of water, sugar (or in this case, a keto-friendly sweetener), and blueberry extract in a saucepan until fully combined.

Alternatives to Sugar Syrup for Keto-Friendly Cocktails

If you’re not too eager about whipping up keto sugar syrup for your cocktails, you can always find ready-made keto-friendly sweeteners and syrups to do the job. Here are some alternatives you can use:

Liquid Sweeteners

Sweeteners like stevia, xylitol, sucralose, and erythritol easily fit into a ketogenic diet because of their low-carb and sugar-free makeup. The same is true with monk fruit and yacon syrup. You can find these in various forms, including liquid versions that you can use to sweeten your cocktails.

Sugar-Free Flavored Syrups

An even better way to put some pep in your cocktails is to use sugar-free flavored syrups, like Skinny Mixes keto and natural syrups. These options come in a wide range of flavors, allowing you to play with different tastes to customize your drinks. Skinny Mixes even has naturally sweetened margarita syrups that are low-carb, low-sugar, and only thirty calories!

Make Keto-Friendly Cocktails With Skinny Mixes

If you’re on a keto diet but can’t resist sipping on your favorite cocktails, you don’t have to ruin your health progress just to give in to your guilty pleasures! You can use Skinny Mixes’ keto and natural syrups to sweeten your alcoholic beverages—or any drink, really—without your body getting kicked out of ketosis. 

For starters, try Skinny Mixes’ naturally sweetened margarita syrups, or if you’d like to be a little bit more creative, get a bottle (or two!) of various syrups, from classics like vanilla to playful options like pumpkin spice. Enjoy cocktails on keto today!