I see in the recipe for the chocolate cake for Father’s Day bake-off Rose has turbinado sugar. I dpn’t ever recall seeing this item over here, it would probably be in some areas, but not mine! What is the best replacement, do you think? I’m sure Annie could tell me, but I was thinking either granulated or Demerara? I have Googled it to see what it is and it says it has bigger grains than granulated and is a golden colour. What do others use?
By the way, for those of you who haven’t seen it, Marie Wolff has already made this cake an it is on her new blog! Looks lovely!
Hi Jeannette, I agree with Shimi - Demerara is next best. I looked up Harold McGee and he says they are basically the same except that Turbinado is not quite as sticky. Muscovado is another option which is very similar. Good luck with the bake-off and have a great trip to Cyprus.
Annie
Jeannette, When we were at Dart’s Farm, Rose picked up a bag of Raw brown granulated cane sugar and she said it looked like the closest thing to Turbinado. I said, I thought demerara would be, but Rose said that turbinado had more molasses qualities to it.
Kate can confirm what bag she was looking at.
hello bakers! let me cheap in from the land where this sugar is made. turbinado sugar is regular plain white refined white sugar, but with a few less steps during production. it has not gone bleaching nor pulverization, thus the light brown color and larger crystals.
for cake baking, the larger crystals don’t do much, in fact, most recipes ask you to dissolve the sugar or run it thru the food processor. it is the extra brown which is sought, which are the remaining molasses prior bleaching, which add a little hint of brown sugar flavor.
you can substitute turbinado with a blend of mostly plain white refined sugar and 10-20% brown sugar. in fact, when I run my turbinado in the food processor, it turns pretty white very close in color to plain white sugar, just a hint of cream color, this tells you that turbinado is very close to white sugar and indeed can be used interchangeably for most all cake recipes calling for white sugar. http://www.sugarintheraw.com/
Thank you to all of you for taking the trouble to help me out, I think I will do what Hector suggests and which I thought would be a good idea myself and that is to use granulated sugar with a small amount of soft brown sugar, the natural sort. I haven’t finally made up my mind which cake to do but it is worth knowing what to use when I do make it, which I shall, sooner or later.
By the way, this is the Coffee Cake Rose showed us in one of the videos, I made it last week. Just had a piece, warmed with cream poured over, really yummy!!!
The cake looks so delicious Jeannette! I make it with apples and it is my niece’s favorite cake.
Hector, thanks for clearing that up. Sugar in the Raw is easy to get here. I’ve also seen something called molasses sugar, the color is the same but more fine grained. Can that be used as well?
Here’s my 2 cents on the sugar question: I have organic, turbinado, demarara and muscovado in the pantry right now, so I did a taste test of those, along with refined white and light brown. The organic has more molasses flavor than refined white, but only a little. It has less flavor than the turbinado and demarara, which are nearly indistinguishable both in terms of color and taste (and I couldn’t detect any stickiness in either, though after a winter in my pantry they may have dried out a bit). The muscovado is more strongly flavored than the others, about the same as regular light brown sugar, but more complex and rounded.
It’s sort of funny that I had them all, they all came from my small-town grocery, which puts various sugars on sale now and then. This always induces me to buy (muscovado on sale? Yes, please!). And yet, I can’t get simple flours, like the Gold Medal Better for Bread that Rose recommended for croissants.
I forgot to mention that for my samples, the turbinado and demarara both had large crystals, which I will grind super-fine before using for cakes.
Yes, I tend to buy items that are not always available, I live in a small town too, and then wonder what I have bought them for, and spend time searching for recipes to use up my unusual ingredients! All those sugars you mention I can get easily, except for the Turbinado, which I must admit I hadn’t even heard of until I saw it in the Cake Bible!
I will probably use either white granulated sugar with some muscavado added for colour and flavour or use some golden caster sugar which I like for cakes and again some of the brown sugar to give it more colour an flavour.
JEANNETTE:
Good afternoon. As you know the basic differance between Turbinado sugar & light brown sugar is ....simply put…the diameter of the sugar beads in turbinado sugar are larger then the beads of the light brown sugar. Your subst. of Lt. brown sugar into your cake product, your cake will not know the differance. I am certain Jeannette it will be perfect as usual.
Enjoy the rest of the day.
Héctor, ¿se puede usar azúcar “crudo” en lugar de Turbinado, Demerara u otro?
El crudo es de color café claro y con cristales grandes. Como no sé cómo saben
los otros, no sé cuál azúcar o prducto derivado usar. Por cierto, Costa Rica *es*
el país donde se hace azúcar
¿SAbés lo que es dulce de tapa, raspadura, piloncillo o panela?
¿Ese dulce, derretido sería el equivalente a molasses?
Héctor, ¿could Turbinado sugar be substituted with “raw sugar?
¿Is panela, dulce de tapa, piloncillo o raspadura the equivalent of molasses?
BTW, Costa Rica is the country where sugar comes from
hectorwong - 12 June 2009 01:13 PM
hello bakers! let me cheap in from the land where this sugar is made. turbinado sugar is regular plain white refined white sugar, but with a few less steps during production. it has not gone bleaching nor pulverization, thus the light brown color and larger crystals.
for cake baking, the larger crystals don’t do much, in fact, most recipes ask you to dissolve the sugar or run it thru the food processor. it is the extra brown which is sought, which are the remaining molasses prior bleaching, which add a little hint of brown sugar flavor.
