Demerara sugar substitutes

The same idea from a different mill: coarse, dry, pale golden crystals of partially refined cane sugar. If a recipe says demerara and you have turbinado, just use it and stop thinking about it.

Best for

sprinkling on scones, muffins and cookies, creme brulee tops, coffee, cocktail syrups, crumbles, flapjacks

Turbinado crystals are usually a shade smaller and slightly damper, and it carries a touch less molasses, so the crunch on a scone top is a little finer and the flavour is a hair cleaner. Nobody will notice in a baked dish. Under a blowtorch for a creme brulee it behaves identically.

When demerara is going on top of something rather than into it, crystal size is the whole point and colour and molasses are secondary. Any big-crystal sugar will give you the sparkle and the crunch.

Best for

scone and muffin tops, sugar cookies, pie crust edges, banana bread, shortbread, cinnamon buns

White sanding sugar gives you the same crackle but the top looks bright white rather than warm amber, and you lose the faint toffee note that demerara adds as it half-melts in the oven. Pearl sugar is even bigger and stays as distinct white nuggets rather than softening at all, which is lovely on a Belgian-style bun and wrong on a delicate scone.

Similar molasses level, similar caramel flavour, and almost always in the cupboard. The right answer whenever the demerara is being creamed into butter, whisked into a batter or melted into a syrup.

Best for

cakes and cookie dough, sticky toffee pudding, black cake, caramel sauce, marinades, syrups

Brown sugar is soft, fine and moist, which changes two things. It cannot give you a crunchy top, full stop, so do not use it as a sprinkle. And it adds a little extra moisture, so cookies made with it spread slightly more and come out chewier and softer than the crisper result demerara gives. Pack it into the cup or weigh it, and break up any lumps first.

The build-it-yourself version, and a genuinely accurate one for flavour. Demerara only carries a little molasses, which is why the amount here is half what you would use to make light brown sugar.

Best for

cakes and batters, cocktail syrups, caramel, barbecue sauces, rum punch

The flavour lands very close, but the texture does not: you get fine damp crystals rather than big dry ones, so this is useless for a topping and slightly softens baked goods the way brown sugar does. Rub the molasses into the sugar with your fingertips or a fork until there are no dark streaks, otherwise you get pockets of bitterness. Treacle or dark cane syrup works in place of molasses at the same amount.

Usable in most recipes, and the honest fallback when you have nothing else. Ninety-eight percent of demerara is just sugar.

Best for

cakes, cookies, syrups, coffee, sweetening drinks and sauces

What you lose is the warm toffee background and the amber colour, so a demerara shortbread made with white sugar tastes cleaner and paler and reads as a plain shortbread, and a demerara syrup in an old fashioned goes from rounded and molasses-tinged to sharply sweet. In a heavily spiced cake, a spiced rum punch or anything with chocolate in it, the difference is almost invisible.

Both are darker and more strongly flavoured than demerara, and both work when you want more depth rather than a neutral match.

Best for

black cake, gingerbread, sticky toffee pudding, barbecue sauce, dark rum cocktails

Muscovado is wet, sticky and heavily molasses-flavoured, so it takes a bake several shades darker and much more assertive, which is wonderful in a Caribbean black cake and overpowering in a plain vanilla sponge. Coconut sugar is dry and crumbly with a smoky butterscotch note and slightly less sweetening power, so you may want a little extra. Neither gives crunch.