So this post is all about sugar! It might sound dull, but for the past few days, trying to find where I could find demerara and muscovado sugar in Paris became the bane of my existence! (Yes, I lead a pretty boring life!)
The closest equivalent I've found for light brown sugar / demerara is "cassonade." This is what it looks like. You can find it easily in every supermarket (Franprix, Champion etc) and it's not expensive. It's not quite as fine as I had been expecting and that I need to keep hunting for, but it's the same as a light brown sugar in every other aspect.
Indeed, it was very similar in texture. In the photo below, you can see what it looks like when it's just been poured into a frying pan with some butter:
It's a little bit darker than how I remember muscovado and has a slightly stronger smell of molasses, but in terms of taste once I'd made it into a sauce, it was almost exactly the same. Definitely a successful substitution.
The closest equivalent I've found for light brown sugar / demerara is "cassonade." This is what it looks like. You can find it easily in every supermarket (Franprix, Champion etc) and it's not expensive. It's not quite as fine as I had been expecting and that I need to keep hunting for, but it's the same as a light brown sugar in every other aspect.
And this next sugar "sucre de canne" was the closest to muscovado that I could get. I haven't seen it in mainstream supermarkets but I found it in a Naturalia shop in Paris for 3 euros 10 for a kilo. (I went to the one on rue Saint Antoine, in between Saint Paul métro and Bastille.) The lady there told me that they didn't have the "appellation" for muscovado, but that this was very similar:
Indeed, it was very similar in texture. In the photo below, you can see what it looks like when it's just been poured into a frying pan with some butter:
It's a little bit darker than how I remember muscovado and has a slightly stronger smell of molasses, but in terms of taste once I'd made it into a sauce, it was almost exactly the same. Definitely a successful substitution.
