A world of sugar beyond white, brown and powdered

by Marisa McClellan, Posted Jan 23rd 2008 @ 7:46PM

I first learned that there was a world of sugar beyond white, brown and confectioners when I started watching Nigella Bites in the winter of 2002. She was always suggesting that you use a thing called demerara, which, when said in her delicious British accent, sounded particularly appealing. The closest I could get in the small city market near my apartment was a bag of turbinado sugar (aka Sugar in the Raw). I loved the turbinado for sweetening tea and to sprinkle on top of baked goods (I tend to sprinkle it on unbaked scones so that I don't have to create a glaze or frosting). I try to always have it on hand these days.

A few years ago a friend introduced me to Sucanant, (it stands for Sugar Cane Natural) and it's a less processed sugar that retains much of its molasses (and a few nutrients). It's become my go-to sugar for most baking projects, mostly because I like to believe that it is in someway slightly more virtuous than refined sugar.

This little rumination on sugar was inspired by Nicole (a Slashfood alum) at Baking Bites post on demerara, turbinado and muscovado sugars earlier today. For more information and details about those sugars, go check out her post.

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Filed Under: Did you know?, Ingredients
Tags: Baking Bites, demerara, did you know, muscovado, Nigella Lawson, sucanant, sugar, turbinado

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Reader comments (Page 1 of 1)

1-26-2008 @7:41AM Lzbeth said... I've been a turbinado sugar convert for about a year now. It has replaced refined white sugar in my kitchen completely. Being a tea drinker, I've been enjoying it's sweetness in comparsion to white, which seems sickly sweet. I *highly* recommend it
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1-23-2008 @10:06PM Sugar for Me said... Billington's has wonderful sugars. All very molasses tasting and add a wonderful tang to baked things. The light works best but the dark is a real star, you just have to tinker with your recipe a bit to handle the lack-of-raise caused for some reason by the dark.

I refuse to use plain old brown sugar anymore. It's usually just white sugar cheap manufacturers throw a little sugar syrup into...not even molasses.

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1-23-2008 @11:02PM Brighella said... We use succanat pretty frequently in baked goods, oatmeal etc. We use it in refrigerator pickles when we know its just going to be for common use, but if we are having company or something we switch back to white sugar as the succanat is darker and makes the brine dark. We even have a cat who's third name is succanat because when she wants to, she can be a real sweetiehead. (her full name is Zorra Butthead Succanat, so you can imagine the personality that told us this was her name!)

Sarah
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1-24-2008 @3:07PM ouj said... Try muscovado with plain yoghurt, (fresh) strawberries, sliced ripe bananas or whatever it is you like to put into your yoghurt. It's really great.
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