Natural cane sugar is made from sugar cane, while conventional white granulated sugar may be made from either cane or sugar beets. Since both plants produce molecules of sucrose that are identical, this is not a significant distinction. Also, the “natural” tag is a bit of an oversell: Natural cane sugar is only slightly less processed than regular white sugar. That said, it retains a bit of a blond color.
Cane Sugar vs. Granulated Sugar
Is natural cane sugar the same thing as granulated sugar?
Cane Sugar vs. Granulated Sugar
Natural cane sugar is made from sugar cane, while conventional white granulated sugar may be made from either cane or sugar beets. Since both plants produce molecules of sucrose that are identical, this is not a significant distinction. Also, the “natural” tag is a bit of an oversell: Natural cane sugar is only slightly less processed than regular white sugar. That said, it retains a bit of a blond color.
How the Sugars Taste Plain
Some tasters found that cane sugar had slightly more depth of flavor compared with regular granulated sugar when they tasted both plain, but overall the sugars tasted very similar.
How Cane Sugar Behaves in Recipes
With such slight differences in the sugars, we weren’t surprised that sugar cookies made with cane sugar had a slightly deeper color but otherwise were no different from the batch made with conventional granulated sugar.
We had more of an issue with simple syrup. The natural cane sugar produced a liquid with a caramel tint rather than the traditional colorless syrup. While a brown syrup would be fine in iced tea, it might discolor lemonade or a pale cocktail (like a Black Tea–Port Milk Punch).
We also found natural sugar to be problematic in caramel sauce. The syrup in the pan was brown from the start, which made it hard to detect color changes. Furthermore, the impurities in the natural cane sugar caused foaming (to varying degrees depending on the brand), in one case making it impossible to get an accurate temperature reading.
The takeaway
We found that cane sugar is acceptable in some applications, such as sugar cookies, but it should be avoided in recipes in which its slightly darker color gives the food a brown tint.
