The Turbinado Sugar Substitute That Works Great In A Pinch

Have you ever seen a cookie recipe that looked so good that you wanted to go straight to cooking in the kitchen? Let's say you wanted to prepare this recipe that calls for some ingredients such as butter, an egg, turbinado cane sugar, and a couple of other things. You gather the ingredients to make them, but you can't seem to find the turbinado cane sugar. If you're like most people, you might run to the store and grab some to replace what you're out of. If you're more crafty or don't have the time to run to the store, you'll find a substitute ingredient to replace the cane sugar. Before we get to that, it helps to know exactly what cane sugar is and what it tastes like.

Turbinado cane sugar is partially refined sugar harvested from a sugarcane. Cane sugar is also sometimes referred to as "raw sugar," but that isn't exactly true. The reason that turbinado cane sugar isn't classified as raw sugar is that it has already been cleaned of the soil and is somewhat refined, and also because producing cane sugar means that the juice from the sugar cane must be boiled for it to crystallize and thicken. The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) says that true raw sugar isn't fit for human consumption because of the impurities and dirt. Here's how to substitute for turbinado sugar if you don't have any.

Turbinado cane sugar looks a lot like brown sugar in color but has crystals that are quite larger; it's also readily available in most grocery stores, coffee shops, and health food stores. Due to the refining process that happens to make turbinado cane sugar, about 3.5% of the molasses remains in the sugar, giving it its subtle brown hue and light flavor with notes of caramel. In comparison to other brown sugars, turbinado cane sugar has about the same molasses content as light brown sugar, whereas demerara sugar has about 1 to 2% molasses, giving it the lightest brown hue. Dark brown sugar and muscovado sugar have higher amounts of molasses at 6.5% and 8 to 10%, respectively.

Because turbinado cane sugar and light brown sugar have similar molasses contents, all you have to do to substitute turbinado cane sugar when you're in a pinch is to use an equal amount of light brown sugar to the recipe. If you only have dark brown sugar and white sugar, you can combine half of each sugar to make a turbinado cane sugar substitute. Demerara sugar is another great swap because it has a similar texture, but you may want to add a little bit of molasses since they are about 1% different on that end.