Tag: molasses

Raspberry Bread

I’ve been choosing raspberry bread for breakfast. My system rebels against so many packaged products now that it’s hard to find gluten-free bread that doesn’t cause a major, itchy rash. Itching makes it hard to sleep. It makes it harder to work. A rash means I have to alter my wardrobe. I just need to bake something.

three raspberries on white with fingers picking up the middle one

Breakfast is hard. I used to eat unsweetened, homemade yogurt, raw almonds, and fresh berries. Now that fermented food is a problem for me, I’ve been looking for the best alternative. Muffins could be a good choice.

I didn’t want to mess with a muffin tin or measuring cups for that matter. I decided to dump some stuff in a bowl, throw it in a baking dish, and hope for the best.

Here’s what happened. I started with a large bowl and a small baking dish. After setting the oven to heat to 350°, I sprayed the baking dish with olive oil spray.

Then I started dumping things in the bowl – sweet potato flour, tapioca flour, almond flour, taro powder, baking powder, maple syrup, vanilla, ground cloves, salt, olive oil, eggs, and milk. I added a little hot water, stirred in some fresh raspberries. I baked it 30 minutes. It was quite tasty and satisfying.

I tried again with larger quantities of everything. I had used all of the sweet potato flour I had on hand. Sweet white sorghum flour or gluten-free oat flour could work instead. I could also use melted butter instead of oil, add some molasses, or honey. I dumped away and baked longer. The result has been my breakfast the past two days.

The bread has a dense crumb with a pleasant texture and flavor. I was thinking of calling it spoon bread, but the egg holds it together well enough to slice. I can even toast it.

The raspberries are such a treat to bite into. They’re bright and a little sweet, but also a little tangy. That contrasts with the cloves and taro in a nice way. I think this bread is a keeper.

Before it can become a Cooking2Thrive recipe, I’ll need to devise actual measurements, test the recipe, tweak it, and test again. There will be enough dirty dishes to more than make up for the dump and bake method I’ve used up to this point.

Measuring will bring more consistent results, but it’s good to remember cooking is an art as well as a science. Inevitable differences in heat, humidity, and ingredients will tell a trained eye that the batter may need an additional tablespoon of water. The observant nose will detect an insufficient amount of vanilla.

This bread started as me playing with ingredients in the hope of creating a breakfast food that wouldn’t make me itch. The trial was successful enough that I wanted more.

Your favorite dish may not be raspberry bread, but it may come from playing in the kitchen. Enjoy the process! Devour the rewards.

Where Does Brown Sugar Get Its Tan?

taw sugarI’ve been comparing tans to brown sugar which led me to wonder – where does brown sugar get its tan?

I know that sounds like a weird comparison, but I’m going to a wedding in Santa Barbara this summer so I’ve been focussed on getting some sun on my legs. At some point, I may or may not have been gawking at some tan legs in the grocery store thinking that’s the shade I want. Next thing you know, I’m wondering about the different colors of brown sugar – a leap not that unusual in my world. It happens.

Soft, moist, caramel tasting brown sugar comes in many shades – light brown, dark brown, and even darker pilonchillo. Ever since I was a kid I’ve loved the way it feels to pack it into a measuring cup and then watch it easily break apart again when poured into a bowl of cookie dough. It seems that it’s time to learn more about this delightful ingredient.

The short answer to where does brown sugar get its tan is…molasses. The darkness of the brown is directly related to the percentage of molasses it contains. Light brown sugar contains about 4.5% while dark brown sugar contains about 6.5%.

Brown sugar begins just like white sugar as a syrup most often made from crushing sugar cane to squeeze out juice, then evaporating that cane juice to form a thick syrup. A similar syrup can be derived from sugar beets. The thick syrup is full of molasses. Sometimes the syrup is further evaporated and then spun in a centrifuge to remove the molasses. This is how Turbinado and demerara sugars are made. You may know them as Raw Sugar.

Other natural brown sugars are not refined (put in a centrifuge) and retain a higher degree of molasses. You may know these as panela, rapadura, chancaca, jaggery, or piloncillo. These sugars are commonly boiled in open pans on wood fires until the sugar cane juice is reduced by 70% and begins to form crystals. The sugar is then poured into a mold or is cooled and beaten to produce granulated brown sugar.

In the Philippines, partially centrifuged evaporated and crystallizing cane juice is used to create a mush that’s allowed to drain using gravity creating a natural brown sugar called muscovado. A similar process is used in Japan to produce kokuto.

While natural brown sugars retain molasses from the partially evaporated cane juice, brown sugar can also be made by adding molasses to refined white sugar. This is how commercial brown sugar is commonly made. Adding molasses back to white sugar allows the ratio of molasses to be carefully controlled. It is also a less expensive process.
br sugar
For a fun experiment, buy a cone of pilonchillo at your local mercado and a bag of commercially produced brown sugar from your neighborhood market. Wash a small amount of each with water in a bowl. After the water turns brown, pick up a few sugar crystals from the bottom of the bowl with your fingers. Notice how the sugar crystals that remain in the bowl of washed commercial brown sugar are white, but the remaining pilonchillo crystals are darker. That is because there’s molasses within the crystals.

What’s all that pretty brown sugar used for? It sweetens many baked goods and is used as a substitute for maple syrup or maple sugar. It is slightly lower in calories than white sugar. To further reduce calories and carbs in a recipe you may want to consider using coconut crystals.

Now that we’ve gotten to know brown sugar a little better, it’s time for me to get back outside and get some sun on my legs. I don’t want them to be scary white when I hit the beach!