Muscavado Sugar
Not sure you noticed this, but if you look closely at many of those pictures for the fig cookies over the last couple days (see here and here for more details), you may have seen a few dark spots in the dough, almost as if it were mottled or freckled.
Those were undissolved grains of muscavado sugar.
And with that little sentence, we turn to the question of "real food" in earnest.
Sugar, as you probably know, is a refined product. Later, when we talk more about our book out in just six weeks, REAL FOOD HAS CURVES: HOW TO GET OFF PROCESSED FOOD, LOSE WEIGHT, AND LOVE WHAT YOU EAT (and you can already see that title here), we'll talk about how sugar fits into the larger plan. (Basically, it slips into the third of our four categores, the one called "barely real food.")
Suffice it to say that refined sugar is made by pressing sugarcane, beets, date palms, or sorghum to extract their juices. Unfortunately, that's not all there is to it. The juice is treated with various chemical alkalis, then boiled, skimmed, cooled, filtered, treated more, separated, treated more, sieved, and thickened in a variety of chemical processes. Along the way, flavor notes are canceled; essential minerals, washed away or chemically deconstructed.
Unrefined sugar suffers far fewer of these indignities. This is not to pretend that it's somehow healthy. It isn't. Almost all sweeteners ring in at 45 calories per tablespoon--with little nutritional value.
That said, do I love the stuff? Of course! Look at the desserts on this blog. But do I know what I'm doing? Yes, more and more so. I don't want to eat chemical residues. I want more flavor in every bite.
That's why Bruce has lately been baking with lots of unrefined sugars--of which muscavado is one of several that keep much of their mineral profile and many more of their natural flavors--some bitter, some a little sour, and even some umami in the mix. It's not generic sweet, the way refined white sugar is. Rather, muscavado sugar offers more flavor in every grain. (And it's not brown sugar. But more on that later.)
More flavor is what it's all about. Because as we'll talk in the months ahead, the MORE you can cue satiety in your brain and your stomach through flavor and pleasure, the LESS you'll eat in the long run.
Now that's math anybody can like.
dessert, muscavado sugar, refined sugar, sugar, unrefined sugar
Reader Comments (6)
Ooh, ooh! I discovered moscavado sugar relatively recently when I wrote an article about natural sweeteners a few months ago, and now I sprinkle it on my oatmeal. HAVE YOU TRIED SPRINKLING IT ON YOUR OATMEAL? I'm sure it's wonderfulerific in your fig cookies, but have you tried sprinkling it on your oatmeal? (Did I ask that already?)
Cheryl: Don't shoot me, but maple syrup is more my thing in oatmeal. But maybe that's because we're sugaring up here right now--almost done, in fact. But I can certainly imagine it on said oatmeal. In fact, I promise to try it. Promise. PROMISE.
M.
I seem to be making a lot of jam lately and am curious- do you think if I made it with a sugar such as muscavado it would work? The muscavado maybe too over powering in the flavour department and taking away from the fruit or would it upset the balance of fruit to sugar somehow and stop it from gelling as well?
Hey there, my hippy friend. Bruce doesn't think you can make it with muscavado. You could certainly make chutney. But there's just too much residual molasses in muscavado to get a good set--and you might have too many competing flavors, too. But chutney? You bet.
I think you're wrong about the calories in sugar. Sugar has about 15 calories per level teaspoon or 45 calories/tablespoon. Fat, on the other hand, has 120 calories per tablespoon.
Gack! How right you are, Sally. The copy is now changed above to reflect USDA guidelines. My error completely. I was thinking oil, not sugar. (Butter has slightly fewer calories--as does lard.)