Sugar: A Substitution Experiment

FOR THESE REASONS, SUBSTITUTIONS DON’T WORK.

• No two ingredients have identical profiles.
  If you want it to taste like the original, you will need to make the original recipe as it is written.
• Not all ingredient substitutions are 1:1.
  This little article will show you how true this is. An ingredient might look the same, smell the same, or even taste the same, but if it is used in the recipe in the same way as the original ingredient, it may yield a different final product. Flour is a notorious example of this.
• We have a few ways to measure when scaling ingredients.
  Some ways to convert and scale are more “proper,” but might not be the best way to scale ingredients for that particular recipe. Also, even if you do your research and scale an ingredient, its chemical composition can alter the way it interacts with other ingredients, meaning more alterations might be necessary to make it work better.

Sugar in baking: a summary

When cooking, sometimes sugar takes the same status as salt: a seasoning. In baking, though, sugar has a much more active role in the final product because it interacts with the other ingredients in ways that enhance the qualities of the other ingredients. Many modern recipes use sugar to act as an aerator, flavor balancer/enhancer, and even as food for the yeast that fluffs up our bread. When all the ways sugar works in a baking recipe are tallied, it’s pretty clear that substituting one sugar for another might be a challenge.

The Experiment

I did a very simple experiment with three pricier sugar substitutions to see how they would interact with the other ingredients. I did not use any liquid substitutions, because those would obviously need more recipe alteration than the dry varieties. Only one of my sugars was not a 1:1 conversion, and the other two should be a straight substitute for granulated sugar based on a quick internet search. If the internet is correct, these substitutions should have a similar result to the granulated sugar version of the recipe.

The Recipe

I used a copycat recipe because a common cookie would be easy to describe in terms of what it should taste like, smell like, and feel like while eating them. Sugar Spun Run has a very simple but delicious Nilla Wafers recipe that tastes anywhere from a crispy sugar cookie to a genuine Nilla Wafer from the store.

THE CONVERSIONS

The original recipe calls for 2/3 cup granulated sugar (133 grams). If you search for the ingredient substitutions above, the internet tells you:

• Raw Cane Sugar: 1:1 substitution
• Maple Sugar: 1:1 substitution
• Stevia Powder (No erythritol): 4:1 substitution

When dividing 2/3 by 4, you get 1/6 cup, and I don’t have a 1/6 cup in my drawer. I decided instead to divide the gram equivalent by 4, which is a nice and tidy 33.25 grams. This caused another issue, though: None of the substitutions weigh the same amount as granulated sugar. Dammit!

Another quick internet search revealed the following weights for the substitutions:

• Raw Cane Sugar: 220 grams per cup
• Maple Sugar: 203 grams per cup
• Stevia Powder (No erythritol): 68 grams per cup
• Granulated sugar (for comparison): 200 grams per cup

So from here, I did some simple math of taking 1 cup of each ingredient and multiplying by 2/3 to get the conversion:

• Raw Cane Sugar: 220 grams x 2/3 = 146.67 grams
• Maple Sugar: 203 grams x 2/3 = 135.33 grams

Stevia powder was an issue, though, because it is not a 1:1 conversion. To get the proper amount of stevia to obtain a similar sweetness required multiplying by 2/3 and by 1/4 to get the right amount:

• Stevia Powder (No erythritol): 68 grams X 2/3 X 1/4 = 11.33 grams

 I knew stevia powder would be an issue, but not like this. I felt fear.

The cookie outcome

I won’t bore you with the details of cutting an egg into fourths, or any of the challenges I faced using a stand mixer to make a tiny recipe with each sugar. Instead, I will show you the dough before baking.

As you can see, all of the doughs have different consistencies and surprisingly, the granulated sugar’s texture was pretty rough. This could be due to under-creaming, but honestly, I under-creamed all of them because I was tired of doing this. The good news was that the recipe made pretty much exactly the amount of cookies it said it would. I ate the remaining one cookie in dough form.

Now, for the final product:

Summary of flavors:

• Granulated sugar: Delicious, classic sugar cookie
• Stevia: Horrible, bitter cookie I would feed to my enemies so I could laugh at their faces
• Maple sugar: Yummy fall-inspired cookie
• Raw sugar cane: Delicious, classic sugar cookie

Summary of textures:

• Granulated sugar: soft and smooth, very consistent
• Stevia: Dry and flour-like
• Maple sugar: Thick and rich, very consistent
• Raw sugar cane: Firmer but smooth, very consistent

By day 2, the obvious winner of the Nilla Wafer contest was the raw sugar cane cookie. It was crispy like a Nilla Wafer should be, and it had the perfect flavor you’d expect. Surprisingly, the granulated sugar cookie never hardened to a crisp and remained soft. The maple sugar, while delicious, had a strong maple flavor that reminded me of turtlenecks and pumpkin spice. If the experiment was purely for comparison to granulated sugar, though, none of the substitutions matched the granulated sugar end result.

The Moral of the Story

Granulated sugar is usually highly processed and no bueno for you healthwise; however, most recipes that use sugar are formulated to work with it. It is possible to use sugar substitutions, but even when the internet tells you it’s a 1:1 conversion, chances are high that the substitution will not behave the same way granulated sugar does. Your best bet: find recipes that are made for the substitutions, and you will get better results. But if you are dead-set on using a standard recipe, raw cane sugar seems to be the closest substitution you can find with minimal alterations.

How does this relate to old recipes? Well, ingredients were different back in the old days. Flour was made with different processes up until the turn of the 20th century, and the same can be said about many other ingredients (including sugar). Some ingredients used back then don’t even exist anymore. As I demonstrated above, even the difference in processing cane sugar can make a difference in your final product. We might not be able to taste these old meals exactly as they tasted back when they were written, but my goal is to get as close as I can.