Thursday, March 10, 2011

Sucanat

The following information is from http://www.wisegeek.com/

"Sucanat is a minimally refined form of cane sugar. The process for making Sucanat starts out like that used for other forms of cane sugar, with the harvesting of the sugar canes. The canes are cut, leaving the roots behind so that they will sprout new canes in the coming year, and then they are crushed in a mangler which extracts their naturally sweet juice. If the sugar was going to be refined, the juice would be run through an evaporation process which included measures for purification, and in this process, much of the natural molasses would be extracted..

Sucanat is simply heated and them allowed to cool, forming granular crystals of what is basically dried sugar cane juice. Hence the name Su (sugar) Ca (cane) Nat (natural).

Because it does retain the molasses, it can have a very strong distinct flavor. It is grainy, rather than crystalline. It also contains less sucrose, because it has not been purified...white sugar contains the most sucrose....and is mostly ALL sucrose."

It has been fun to experiment with. Some suggest that it doesn't work well with citrus and chocolate flavors. I haven't gone there yet, but I do know that it is awesome with natural peanut butter. My family adores these simple, delicious, gluten-free cookies:


Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies
In bowl, mix:

1 C. natural salted peanut butter (if not salted, add a little sea salt)
3/4 C. sucanat

1 egg

1 t. vanilla

1/2 t. baking soda

1/2 C. fruit-sweetened chocolate chips


Preheat oven to 350. Mix all ingredients together with a hand mixer. Should make about 15 cookies. I like to use a scooper to put them on my cookie sheet and then make a criss-cross on them with my fork, to kind of flatten them out.

Bake for 9 minutes. Let them cool before you take them off the cookie sheet. Enjoy!

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