Baking pies with Billington's brown sugar

[Kent Wang]

Billington's make some really excellent brown sugars. I don't know if their claim that "some [brands' sugars] are simply white refined sugar with molasses syrup added in to give the appearance and colour of brown sugar" is true or not, but Billington's definitely looks and tastes much better than Imperial or Domino.

I've tried the Light Muscovado and Molasses sugars in my pumpkin pies and I must say it makes a world of difference. Considering that you put 1 to 1.5 cups of brown sugar in pie, using a quality sugar is essential.

However, because the texture, density and moistness of the Billington's sugars are entirely different from standard supermarket sugars, how does that impact my recipes?

[maggie]

We feature their demerara sugar in a cake with roasted pineapple and black pepper ice cream, so very yummy. You definitely need to give the sugar more to time to combine with the other ingredients, or it will weep out later. It takes a while to melt, for the crystals to break down. I could see that being difficult in a pumpkin pie, unless you heated the cream with the sugar in it before you add the rest of the custard ingredients. Have you tried the muscavado? It's delicious. It's great for the sugar you caramelize on creme brulee.

[Kent Wang]

The last pumpkin pie I made I had stored the fresh pumpkin puree and cream in the fridge before blending with Billington's molasses sugar, unaware of this potential "weeping" issue. I then refridgerated the filling overnight -- I didn't want to bake the pie right away -- and baked the next day. It turned out fine, just like previous batches. The color of the pie ends up a rich mahogany, not at all the bright orange that is color of the pies on the cover of this month's Saveur, but I think it looks better this way.

[ulterior epicure]

We feature their demerara sugar in a cake with roasted pineapple and black pepper ice cream, so very yummy.  You definitely need to give the sugar more to time to combine with the other ingredients, or it will weep out later.  It takes a while to melt, for the crystals to break down.  I could see that being difficult in a pumpkin pie, unless you heated the cream with the sugar in it before you add the rest of the custard ingredients.  Have you tried the muscavado?  It's delicious.  It's great for the sugar you caramelize on creme brulee.

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I've had both Demerara sugar and Muscavado. What's the difference - and what is particularly special about them (that warrants charging unimaginable prices)?

U.E.

[tan319]

Taking a wild guess, maybe it's that the less refining of the product brings the price up?

Also, isn't Billingtons more of a "boutique" company?

It's been very hard for me to source in bulk...

Yes, after visiting the website, the 'unrefining', Fair Trade practices, all of that will certainly result in a higher price.

[Patrick S]

Billington's make some really excellent brown sugars. I don't know if their claim that "some [brands' sugars] are simply white refined sugar with molasses syrup added in to give the appearance and colour of brown sugar" is true or not, but Billington's definitely looks and tastes much better than Imperial or Domino.

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Billington's claim could be a little confusing, since all brown sugar is sucrose+cane molasses, in a ratio of 16:1 to 32:1 by volume. The difference is that some brown sugars are made by simply refining raw sugar to the specified sucrose:molasses ratio (16:1 for dark brown and 32:1 for light brown), whereas other brown sugars are made be mixing molasses back into completely refined sucrose. A major difference between these two methods is that if you are mixing refined sucrose with molasses, it doesn't matter if the sucrose comes from beets or from cane.

Edited February 5, 2006 by Patrick S (log)