Christmas Cookies Healthier alternatives to table sugar

Alternatives to table sugar?
For many families it is a good tradition to bake Christmas cookies and cakes in the Advent season. This usually requires sugar. As sweetening alternatives such as coconut blossom sugar, agave syrup, maple syrup, birch sugar, erythritol and stevia have recently conquered the supermarket shelves, many consumers are wondering if these products can also be used for baking. The answer is: In principle, yes. However, there are a few things to keep in mind:

Alternatives in baking. (Image: V & P Photo Studio / fotolia.com)

Coconut blossom sugar does not taste like coconut, but has a caramel-like flavor. That's because it's made from the nectar of the coconut palm, not the coconut. Practically, it can be dosed like conventional sugar. Who prepares a sponge cake with coconut blossom sugar, for example for marble cake or muffins, must expect that it does not rise so well and in the cake dough slightly larger bubbles. The cake also gets a bit darker. But he can still convince the taste.

Maple syrup is not as sweet as table sugar and it has fewer calories. If the pastry is to taste just as sweet, you have to use more maple syrup than sugar. Agave syrup is different: it has more sweetening power than sugar, so you can reduce the amount of agave syrup by a quarter. Due to its high fructose content, the pastry turns brown faster and more intense. For maple syrup and agave syrup: The viscous consistency ensures that the dough can become too liquid, depending on the type of pastry and recipe. Therefore, it is recommended - especially for recipes with larger amounts of sugar - to replace only a part by syrup or syrup and / or to reduce the amount of liquid in the recipe (eg milk or oil).

Birch sugar is also called xylitol and is one of the sugar substitutes. It tastes like conventional sugar, but it can also be dosed, but contains fewer calories. While batters and shortcrust pastry do very well with birch sugar, yeast dough with birch sugar does not work that well. Erythritol is also a sugar substitute - with the difference that it contains no calories. For baking erythritol in the form of powdered sugar is better suited than the crystalline form. Since it has a lower sweetening power than table sugar, it may be necessary to use more erythritol than sugar.

The calorie-free sweetener Stevia is suitable for baking only in the form of sweetener, since the dough otherwise lacks the necessary volume and the result of baking is therefore hardly satisfactory.

When choosing the product you should take into account that z. As coconut blossom sugar, agave syrup and maple syrup are not domestic products, but have very long transport routes behind them. The sweetening alternatives mentioned are neither cheaper nor per se healthier than table sugar. Hedda Thielking, bzfe