How interchangable are white and brown sugars?
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?
3 answers
Don't use the same combined "quantity" == (in my mind) volume. This is definitely a case where density matters. Either use a conversion based on typical difference in density or, even better, measure by weight. Commercial recipes are typically by weight because that is the reliable way to get repeated results. In a quick search on white (granulated) sugar vs. brown sugar, I found:
Imperial Sugar Conversion Charts - a bunch of information, including:
- 1 lb. granulated = 2-1/4 cups
- 1 lb. brown = 2-1/3 to 2-2/3 cups
Using the average, that would be ~ 2-1/4 vs. 2-1/2 = ~ 11% difference.
- granulated sugar: 849 kg/m^3
- brown sugar: 721 kg/m^3
This is a bit more ~ 17% difference.
My guess is that it won't make much difference for something like a cobbler where it is in the fruit mix (which itself will vary depending on the source and quality of the fruit) or topping, but that this is enough to make a difference in a bread dough or cake batter where the chemistry determines how things rise, etc.
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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
I had a banana bread recipe that called for brown sugar, but all the brown sugar I could find in the house had turned to rock. I never actually got to try the original recipe, but I got a nicely flavoured result using dried honey dates.
Brown sugar is somewhat more dense than white sugar; to make the substitution I use the full volume of white sugar, plus about five dates per cup of sugar. I mash the dates separately and cream them along with the butter and sugar in the recipe, and proceed normally from there.
As far as I've been able to figure out, added molasses tends to make cookies softer, but otherwise doesn't seem to affect baking noticeably. It just tastes different.
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