Almost all desserts are vegetarian — even if you’re a strict vegetarian, you pretty much have to watch out only for gelatin (though see “Sugar: The Vegetarian’s Dilemma,” below), which is animal based. So for this collection of recipes, instead of doing a greatest hits of every type of sweet, I’ve focused on adding more recipes that are vegan and fruit forward, plus many gluten-free options, with some classics thrown in for good measure. You’ll find cookies, cakes, pies, puddings, and all sorts of frozen desserts in these pages, all sweetly satisfying.
Different types of sweeteners have different levels of sweetness and solubility, which dictate how each will behave during cooking. Here’s a rundown of both more and less common sweeteners and some ideas for how to use them.
White sugar, the most common granulated sweetener, is processed from sugar cane or sugar beets. It’s the equivalent of all-purpose flour; you can use it almost everywhere when recipes call for sugar, and usually it’ll work fine. It doesn’t add much in the way of flavor, just a kind of neutral sweetness (it does wonders for texture, too, as we’ll discuss). The grains are medium size and dissolve well when heated or combined with a relatively large proportion of liquid, or with liquid that’s been warmed. All of the following are forms of white sugar.
The light and dark brown sugar that most all of us are familiar with (the soft stuff that needs to be packed down when measuring it for a recipe) is refined white sugar to which molasses has been added. Light brown sugar is about 3.5 percent molasses, dark brown is about 6.5 percent molasses. I use light and dark more or less interchangeably so if I call for one and you don’t have it, feel free to use the other instead. In most dessert recipes, you can substitute brown sugar for white, as long as you remember the color and flavor will be different.
To make what is marketed as “raw sugar,” the sugar is not fully refined; some of the molasses is left in (the “raw” is a misnomer, since this sugar is refined, just not as refined as white sugar). There are several different types of raw sugar; their flavors and textures reflect how much molasses remains:
This is the product of the sap of the flower buds of the coconut palm, boiled down to a syrup and then dehydrated into a granular sugar. It does not taste like coconut at all, rather, the flavor is closer to brown sugar (and like brown sugar, the granules have a brown tint and are moister than white sugar). You can substitute it 1:1 for granulated or brown sugar. Depending on how much you are using, substituting coconut sugar for white sugar can give the final baked good a darker color and moister texture; it also can result in the item cooking through faster, so if using it for the first time, check on your baked good much earlier than you normally would.
Date sugar is made from finely ground dehydrated dates. It’s tasty and nutritious, but doesn’t dissolve easily and varies in sweetness from one batch to the next. Fun for improvised desserts but not a good choice when accurate measures matter.
Fructose is a simple sugar found in honey, fruit, berries, and some root vegetables. It’s super-concentrated and loses power when heated or mixed into liquids, so it’s tricky to use; I don’t mess with it.
Stevia is a no-calorie sweetener, nearly 300 times sweeter than sugar, that’s derived from the plant of the same name. Only highly purified stevia (called rebaudioside, or rebiana, or reb A) is approved for use as an ingredient by the FDA. To me, it’s in the same category as artificial sweeteners like saccharin, aspartame, and sucralose, and should be avoided as a sweetener and an ingredient in baking unless you have medical reasons to use it.
Because the source of the nectar determines the flavor of the honey, there are more than 300 varieties of honey sold in the United States alone, including orange blossom, clover, and eucalyptus. Many commercially produced honeys are blends from different plant sources. All are about 25 percent sweeter than cane or beet sugar, so you use less of it to achieve the same sweetness. Start by replacing just some of the sugar in your favorite recipe and see what happens; cookies, for example, are tricky because honey causes them to spread more than cookies baked with sugar. And remember that the color of honey will darken foods slightly. Some guidelines for baking with honey:
Made from the sap of maple trees, maple syrup is the most American of sweeteners. It varies in color and flavor, depending on the time of year it’s collected. There’s a grading system that’s meant to help you choose, although it often causes confusion. Until relatively recently, it consisted of Grade A (Fancy, Medium Amber, or Dark Amber), Grade B (darker, thicker, with a stronger flavor), and Grade C (darkest, with the most pronounced flavor; this was usually not sold retail). Now, it’s all Grade A — rendering the grade meaningless — but accompanied with descriptors. Grade A, Fancy, is now Grade A, Golden Color with Delicate Taste; Grade B is now Grade A, Very Dark with Robust Taste. Whatever you call it, the thicker, darker syrup is better for baking since its flavor is more pronounced.
You can substitute ⅔ cup maple syrup for every 1 cup of sugar; for every 1 cup of maple syrup added, reduce the liquid in the recipe by ¼ cup and add ¼ teaspoon baking soda to balance the syrup’s acidity. Finally, reduce the oven temperature by 25 degrees to prevent overbrowning. You can also substitute it for honey in a 1:1 ratio with no other changes to the recipe. In both cases, be aware that its distinctive flavor will have an impact on the final taste of the baked good.
A brown, heavy syrup produced during the sugar-making process. The first boiling produces light molasses, which can be used like honey; the second produces dark molasses, a thick, full-flavored, not-so-sweet syrup for cooking; and the third yields blackstrap molasses, the darkest, thickest, most nutritious, and, from the cook’s perspective, least useful of the bunch. You can cook and bake with blackstrap, though it’s best to blend it with light molasses or honey, and you’ll still find the flavor surprising at best.
This is made by boiling down the sap of several types of agave, including the blue agave plant (the source plant for tequila); it is much sweeter than sugar or honey. You can substitute it for no more than half the granulated sugar in a recipe; for every 1 cup sugar, use ⅔ cup agave nectar and reduce the other liquids in the recipe by ¼ cup.
When the starches in whole grain rice are processed, they become the complex sugars maltose and glucose. Rice syrup has a mildly sweet butterscotch taste, and generally produces baked goods that are crisper than those made with cane sugar. Because rice syrup is half as sweet as cane sugar, substituting it in recipes calling for cane sugar can be challenging. As a guideline, for each 1 cup cane sugar substitute 1¼ cups rice syrup, decrease the liquid by ¼ cup, and add ¼ teaspoon baking soda to balance the syrup’s acidity. You can use it as a direct substitute for honey.
Corn syrup (not to be confused with the controversial high-fructose version, which isn’t sold in supermarkets) is a thick, sticky sweetener processed from corn starch. Light corn syrup is clarified; dark is flavored with caramel, which makes it sweeter and (duh) darker.
Cane syrup is made by boiling sugar cane juice until golden and thickened. It has a distinctive caramel flavor and is sweeter than molasses because the sugar hasn’t been removed. It’s popular in the South, particularly Louisiana, where it is used like maple syrup, poured over pancakes and waffles.
Malt syrup, made from sprouted barley, is most often used in the home production of beer; it has a mild, sweet flavor. (Made into a powder, it’s used to make malted milk shakes.)
Treacle, popular in Europe, is similar in flavor to molasses; the light variety is called “golden syrup,” the dark type “black treacle.”
Sorghum syrup is another molasses-like sweetener made from an African grain; use it as you would honey or molasses.
Palm syrup is made by boiling the sap of the date palm tree (palm sugar has the same source); it’s sweet and dark, and is often added to desserts in Asia.