Replacement For Brown Sugar In Recipes

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Every home cook has been there: You're getting ready to bake, you reach into your pantry to get your ingredients and you realize your brown sugar is hard as a rock. Don't worry! Once you know how to soften brown sugar, you can get back to business—and back to making treats like Ree Drummond's brown sugar oatmeal cookies or her favorite turkey brine for Thanksgiving. Don't just toss your brown sugar and use granulated instead—brown sugar has a unique molasses flavor and adds tons of moisture to baked goods.

So what went wrong? The main reason your brown sugar is super hard is because it dried out. After you open a package of brown sugar, you instantly release some of the natural moisture in the sugar. The exposure to open air dries and hardens both the sugar crystals and the molasses in the sugar, making the sugar crystals stick together. The end result: brown sugar that feels more like stone than damp sand! But the good news is your brown sugar is still totally usable. The even better news is that reviving your solid brown sugar is simple—just restore the moisture. Read on to learn how to soften brown sugar in a few different ways. And to keep your brown sugar from hardening in the first place, store it in a tightly-sealed food storage container that isn't prone to rust (don't just fold down the top of the bag and hope for the best). You can also add a brown sugar saver to your container, like a brown sugar bear, which can help maintain moisture in brown sugar for up to six months.

Substitutes For Brown Sugar: 4 Easy Alternatives

This is the fastest and easiest way to soften hardened brown sugar. Just place your block of brown sugar in a microwave-safe bowl. Wet a paper towel and squeeze until just slightly damp. Lay the paper towel over the brown sugar and microwave it in 20-second intervals, loosening the sugar with a fork between each interval, until the sugar has returned to its normal texture.

This method will take a little longer, but it'll do the trick! Place your hardened brown sugar in a secure plastic container or bag. Then, lay a slice of sandwich bread on top of the brown sugar and cover the container with the lid or seal it if using a bag. Let sit for at least 12 hours (or overnight). This method works like magic—the moisture from the bread is transferred to the brown sugar, helping it get back to its normally soft texture. You can also use the same method with apple slices. All you have to do is lay an apple slice or two on top of the brown sugar and apply the same technique as with the slice of sandwich bread.

To soften brown sugar in the oven, place the hardened pieces on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Place the brown sugar in the oven and warm at 250 degrees. Check on the brown sugar every couple minutes or so and break it up with a fork until soft. Allow the brown sugar to cool slightly before trying to use it in a recipe. Remember, you don't want to cook or melt the brown sugar, you just want to soften it—so don't try to speed up the process by raising the temperature of the oven.

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Store brown sugar the right way to keep it from hardening after you've opened the package. Chances are, your brown sugar came in either a plastic bag or a box with plastic packaging inside. In either case, once you've opened the sugar, you should transfer it to an airtight container to keep it moist, or stick the whole thing in a large resealable plastic bag. This way, your brown sugar will maintain as much moisture as possible and be scoopable and ready for baking. That way, you won't have to resort to using a brown sugar substitute.

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How To Substitute Brown Sugar For White Sugar In Baking Recipes

The Best Ways to Keep Bananas Fresh Truffles 101: Here's What You Need to Know Yes, You Can Freeze Milk and Do It Safely Give These 5 Best Baking Soda Substitutes a WhirlThere are many sweeteners that can be used in place of brown sugar, including coconut sugar, plain white sugar, and raw sugars like demerara or turbinado.

Few things are worse than getting halfway through a recipe for the perfect chocolate chip cookie and realizing you’re out of brown sugar.

However, there are several practical substitutions you can use in a pinch, many of which you may already have sitting in your cupboard.

Coconut Sugar Vs. Brown Sugar: What's The Difference?

A combination of white sugar and molasses is your best bet for a brown sugar substitute, as that’s exactly what brown sugar is made of (1).

To make your own light brown sugar, mix 1 cup, or 200 grams (g), of granulated white sugar with 1 tablespoon (tbsp.), or 15 milliliters (mL), of molasses. If you need dark brown sugar, increase the molasses to 2 tbsp. (30 mL).

Summary To make your own brown sugar, mix 1 tbsp. (15 mL) of molasses with 1 cup (200 g) of granulated white sugar.

Brown Sugar Substitute (quick And Easy Options)

If you don’t have molasses on hand, you can easily swap it out for maple syrup with almost no change to your recipe’s final product.

Combine 1 cup (200 g) of granulated white sugar with 1 tbsp. (15 mL) of pure maple syrup to make a brown sugar substitute that can fool even the most sophisticated palette.

Summary Combine 1 cup (200 g) of granulated sugar with 1 tbsp. (15 mL) of maple syrup to make an almost-perfect brown sugar substitute.

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Though coconut sugar looks and tastes a lot like brown sugar, it doesn’t hold as much moisture. This can affect the texture of certain baked goods, potentially making them slightly dryer or more dense than intended.

To improve the moisture content, try adding a little extra fat, such as butter or oil, to your original recipe. You can also try melting the coconut sugar on a stovetop before adding it to your recipe.

Summary Coconut sugar may be evenly swapped for brown sugar, but it can make certain baked goods drier or denser than intended.

What's A Good Dark Brown Sugar Substitute?

Because these substitutions are liquid, you’ll want to take into account how the extra moisture may affect the outcome of your recipe, especially when it comes to baking.

You may also want to consider reducing cooking time by a few minutes, as these types of sugar replacements may caramelize more quickly than brown sugar.

Summary You can use liquid sweeteners like maple syrup, honey, and agave nectar to replace brown sugar — but you’ll likely need to adjust your recipe.

How To Soften Brown Sugar

Raw sugars like turbinado or demerara make great brown sugar substitutes, as their naturally light amber colors and mild caramel flavors are similar to the real thing.

The coarse raw sugar granules don’t always mix into dough or batter as uniformly as brown sugar, leaving behind a grainy texture. This is especially true for low-moisture baked goods or those intended to have a very delicate texture.

If you have a spice grinder or mortar and pestle, you can manually grind the sugar crystals into a finer texture that will more easily integrate into your recipe.

Brown Sweetener Zero Calorie Brown Sugar Substitute

You can also try partially dissolving the sugar crystals in a small amount of warm liquid — such as melted butter, oil, or water — before adding them to your batter.

Summary Raw sugars like demerara or turbinado can be substituted for brown sugar in equal proportions. Still, because raw sugar crystals are very coarse, they don’t always mix into batters and doughs as uniformly as brown sugar would.

Muscovado sugar is a minimally refined sugar that makes a great substitute for brown sugar because, like traditional brown sugar, it contains molasses (4).

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However, the molasses and moisture content of muscovado is much higher than that of regular brown sugar. This makes it stickier with a greater tendency for clumping.

Muscovado sugar can be traded equally for brown sugar in almost any recipe, but if you’re baking with it, you may want to consider sifting it to remove any clumps before mixing it into your dough or batter.

You could also try using an electric mixer and adding in the muscovado a little at a time to improve its integration into your recipe.

What Can I Substitute For Brown Sugar?

Summary Muscovado is a minimally refined dark brown sugar that can be used as a regular brown sugar substitute. It’s stickier than brown sugar, so it may require some extra work to mix it into your recipe — especially if you’re using it for baking.

When all else fails, you can replace brown sugar with an even measurement of granulated white sugar without fear of ruining your recipe.

White sugar lacks the same rich

Brown Sugar Substitutes For Last Minute Bakers