I have successfully made fruit scones by reducing the sugar and putting slightly more fruit in but not done recently.
Erythritol is great for sweetening and bulking out your baking in place of sugar, but it does need a lower temperature. It's completely 'natural' in so far as that's a completely meaningless term when it comes to food. It's made out of atoms that occur in nature, at any rate, absolutely 0% Unobtainium.
The "100% natural" claim is utterly meaningless; deadly nightshade, arsenic and uranium-235 are all 100% natural (and gluten free besides). 🙄
The bitterness will have been due to the caffeine in the cocoa powder, especially if you didn't use sugar; you might like to try instead using carob flour, which tastes almost like chocolate but is caffeine-free and naturally sweet (which unfortunately means that you won't be able to reduce the carbs very much using it; but you will need less sugar, since you don't need so much to mask the caffeine). It doesn't quite taste like chocolate, but with the addition of a small amount of vanilla and almond essences (the latter gives a hint of the bitter undertone), most people will be hard-pressed to tell the difference. I used to make "Chocolate Surprise" cupcakes, the surprise being that they didn't contain any chocolate! 😉I made up a cake today with cocoa powder, banana, wholemeal flour, almonds and raisins, included baking powder and three eggs, came out quite bitter but definitely a cake! Would do for the rest of the family with ice cream.
