Unrefined sugars When you are looking for a brown sugar the word unrefined is vitally important because some alternatives are just white sugar plus colouring. Demerara is a traditional unrefined sugar, produced so as to have larger and crunchier crystals than granulated sugar. Unrefined Dark Muscovado has plenty of natural molasses and a sticky texture; unrefined Light Muscovado is slightly less sticky and strong-tasting. Golden granulated and golden caster sugar Demerara sugar Light brown soft sugar Dark brown soft sugar Light muscovado sugar
This is the one to choose if you want to make your own toffee. It is fine-grained, moist and with shades of toffee flavour already present. I now use it for sticky toffee sauce and for caramel ice cream.
I use tons of this one, loving its moist, fine-grained texture and fudgy, dark-brown flavour. This sugar says gingerbread, ginger biscuits and flapjacks, and is a particular favourite in pickles and chutneys.
This is a moist, fine-grained sugar suitable for all home baking that requires a fudgy flavour but a light colour. Perfect for Dundee cake and light, rich fruit cakes.
Here there is more ?brown? flavour, but still with a sparkling appearance. This sugar has a distinctly free-flowing, crunchy texture that?s good for sprinkling, but is also great for baking that needs a bit of extra crunchiness. If you like sweet coffee, then this is the best.
What strikes you about these two is first their free-flowing quality, and secondly their colour, which has all the golden sparkle of champagne. The granulated is for the sugar bowl; use it for tea or for sprinkling over cereals. The caster is suitable for a sugar shaker when you need an extra bit of sweetness on fruit. It?s also an absolute star in meringues, and I now won?t make a sponge cake with anything else.
These are made from pure unrefined sugar cane. This means the colour and flavour that is naturally present in sugar cane has not been refined out to make the sugar pure white. The most recent addition to this range is unrefined icing sugar. I love its flavour and pale-caramel colour when made into icing, and so would now tend not to use white. Golden caster sugar is another favourite I use for baking. Important exceptions to this general recommendation are sugar for making caramel, for perfect white meringues, and to ensure a bright colour when making jams: in these cases you should use conventional white sugar. |
