Whether you are baking a batch of muffins or making a batch of oatmeal, there are many different dishes that can benefit from a finishing sprinkle of sugar. Sugar – especially coarse sugar with large crystals – can add nice sweetness and texture when used to finish a dish, but sugar alone doesn’t add any extra flavor to take a dish over the top. One ... Read More »
The pile of food magazines that I have in my collection is big, and each one is studded with post-its that mark the page of all the delicious sounding recipes that I have long planned to try (and hopefully will in 2013). These magazines are also packed with vintage ads for everything from food to cigarettes that are well-worth a look or two. I’ve seen ... Read More »
Superfine sugar is granulated sugar that has been ground into finer crystals than regular granulated white sugar. Also known as caster sugar, it is popular with bakers because the smaller crystals cream very easily into butter and dissolve more readily into meringues and batters. This leads to products that have a finer crumb and lighter texture when finished, a result that is preferred by many ... Read More »
I have several different types of sugar in my kitchen, including white sugar, brown sugar and a variety of coarse sugars. By coarse sugar, I mean a “sugar in the raw” or natural type of sugar that has a much coarser texture and much larger crystals than plain white sugar has. These natural sugars have a lot of appeal when you’re in the grocery store ... Read More »
Confectioners’ sugar, also known as powdered sugar or icing sugar, is a ultra fine sugar with a smooth and powdery consistency. Confectioners’ sugar is available in several degrees of fineness, from XX to 10X, and the finest is 10X. 10X is type that you are most likely to see in the market or baking supply store because it is the most widely available and the ... Read More »
Molasses is a byproduct of the process of refining sugar cane into sugar. It is a thick syrup, dark in color, with a very strong sweet and somewhat bitter flavor. It is frequently used in baking and it is particularly popular in recipes for spice cookies and cakes, where it adds a lot of brown sugar flavor without making a recipe too sweet. Like honey, ... Read More »
Corn syrup is a syrupy sweetener that is made through the production of cornstarch. In fact, when it was first introduced to the public over 100 years ago, it was often sold as a health food because it originally came from corn. The sweetener is primarily glucose and has a very mild flavor. It inhibits crystallization and, as a result, is very useful in the ... Read More »
When it comes to baking, recipes mostly call for powdered/confectioners’ sugar, plain sugar or brown sugar. The textures and properties of these three types are taken into account when the recipe is formulated. But they are not the be-all and end-all of sugars, and a few of the “specialty” sugars (by which I mean that they’re less common here in the US) are gaining in ... Read More »
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