Sugar rush

December 10, 2007

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This sweetener contains the most nutrients, including iron, calcium, potassium, B vitamins, and chromium. Nutritionist Karnosh uses Sucanat when she bakes. “It’s still really sweet,” she says. “I am going to get a cream-colored cake. It might not be as fluffy, but there’s more to it than pure sucrose.”

Turbinado sugar, also known as demerara or Sugar In The Raw, has large, crunchy, golden-colored crystals. It has the least molasses flavor of the raw sugars, giving it a milder flavor. It’s slightly more refined than dehydrated cane juices, and is a classic favorite for sweetening tea and coffee.

Pastry chefs like to use this sweetener as a finishing sugar, topping cookies such as ginger snaps with it. Medrich subtracts some of the sugar from a shortbread or butter-cookie recipe, replacing it with demerara, but not adding it until she stirs in the flour or nuts. This gives her cookies a satisfying crunch.

Muscovado sugar comes in both light and dark varieties, both featuring high molasses content. “Dark muscovado has a deep, wonderful, smoky, fruity flavor,” says Medrich. In Pure Dessert, Medrich’s flan recipe uses refined sugar in the custard and dark muscovado in the sauce. “The result is simpler to make than a classic flan but dramatically flavored with muscovado,” she says. “I was going for juxtaposition, so the flan tastes of eggs, milk, and cream, sweetened by a neutral refined sugar, and you get this flavorful aroma with the muscovado.”

Light muscovado has a more subtle, delicate flavor. Both muscovados can be used in any recipe calling for light or dark brown sugar, either as straight or partial substitutions. Medrich has drawn them into her Western repertoire of desserts, using them as exotic flavors. But muscovado can also be used for savory cooking; pastry chef Fineberg uses it instead of sugar in her Vietnamese sauces.

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Pilloncillo or panela, a sugar which comes in little hard-pressed cone shapes, is a favorite of Fineberg’s; she heard about it from a Mexican cook she met in San Francisco. Calling this sugar beautiful and rich, Fineberg tosses pilloncillo with fruit or uses it in simple syrups for ice cream or sorbet. Because it is hard, it needs to be grated or put into a bag and pounded with a hammer.

“It’s a flavorful brown sugar that smells just like a street market in Mexico,” says Medrich. “Use it in your oatmeal or use it in your flan like music.”

The varieties of sugar are vast and their properties vary, but each of these sweeteners can have a purpose in your pantry. I’ve decided I’ll continue to rely on refined white sugar for my sugar cookies. But dark muscovado now adds a rich sweetness to the crumble topping on my blackberry pie.

Nancy Schatz Alton is a Seattle-based freelance writer and editor.

Also on Culinate: An article about how sugar affects the body, and a look at high-fructose corn syrup.