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Comments on How interchangable are white and brown sugars?

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How interchangable are white and brown sugars?

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I recently made a peach cobbler following a recipe that called for equal parts of white sugar and brown sugar in both the fruit mix and the topping. This got me wondering about the functions of the two sugars and to what extent they are interchangable. Brown sugar has more of a flavor (from the molasses), but are their baking properties different? If I wanted to use only one type of sugar or only had one type, and used the same combined quantity, how would this affect how the dish bakes (fruit or topping or both)? Or would it only change the flavor?

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Crystal size (2 comments)
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TL;DR

This does not answer your direct question on how to change the proportions. Instead it just solves the problem. Simply buy a bottle of molasses, and then you will never need to consider this, because you can create the brown sugar from white sugar with molasses.

Long version

They are 100% interchangeable with a little trick. First, let's have a look at how brown sugar is manufactured. It's just white sugar mixed with molasses. Yes, that's actually true. There's nothing magic about brown sugar. You can buy the molasses separately. There's no need to buy it premixed.

A drawback with brown sugar is that it becomes like a brick after a while. It's much harder to store for a long time than white sugar. So just buy some molasses, and whenever a recipe calls for brown sugar, use white sugar and molasses. Molasses also lasts virtually forever, so just buy a bottle. This also gives you the benefit of being able to mix in more molasses without adding more sugar if that's what you want. It's like if a recipe calls for salted butter, then you can use unsalted butter and add some salt.

It works very well in all situations I have come across. Not only when you want to mix the brown sugar in a dough or something else. You can also very easily create brown sugar on demand to use for topping. Just put white sugar and molasses in a mixer and * poff * you have brown sugar.

To be honest, since I discovered this, I see actually no reason whatsoever to buy brown sugar. So buy a bottle and never have this worry again.

Here is a good video explaining it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LF8cWXlNSEM

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Karl Knechtel‭ wrote 8 months ago

This would be better if it directly described the proportions needed rather than requiring others to watch the video - to sum up, about 1-4 tablespoons per cup of white sugar, depending on the desired "darkness" of brown sugar being substituted, which can be measured approximately. It also seems worth noting explicitly that in addition to not going bad, molasses (usually sold in a carton here rather than a bottle, btw) doesn't typically solidify at room temperature, and the problem can be fixed by gently heating it - as opposed to the difficulties caused by clumping brown sugar.