Brown Sugar Substitute: What to Use, and How to Make Your Own

If you have run out of brown sugar, the best substitute is brown sugar you make yourself: stir 1 tablespoon of black treacle or molasses into 200g of white sugar and you have light brown sugar, or 2 tablespoons for dark. It takes about a minute, it costs nothing extra if you keep a tin of treacle in the cupboard, and it behaves in a bake exactly like the shop-bought stuff, because it is the same thing. Brown sugar is simply white sugar with some of the molasses added back. Below is the ratio in full, the times you can get away with plain white sugar, and the couple of swaps I would not bother with.

The quick answer

Reach for these in order.

• Best match, made in a bowl: 200g white sugar plus 1 tablespoon black treacle (light brown) or 2 tablespoons (dark brown). Rub it together with your fingers or a fork until it looks even. This is the one I use.
• Good enough in a pinch: plain white sugar, measured like for like. Fine in most recipes, though you lose a little flavour and the softness that brown sugar brings. More on when this matters below.
• If you have the wrong shade: light and dark brown sugar swap for each other one for one. Dark is just moister and more treacly, so a dark-for-light swap gives a slightly deeper, more toffee-ish result, which is rarely a problem.

What brown sugar actually is

This is the bit that makes the substitute obvious. Commercial brown sugar is white refined sugar with molasses stirred back in, either a little (light, or “soft light brown”) or more (dark, or “soft dark brown”). The molasses is what gives it the colour, the damp clumping texture and that faint caramel, slightly bitter note you taste in flapjacks and gingerbread.

So when a recipe asks for brown sugar and you have none, you are not really missing an ingredient. You are missing the mixing step that a factory did for you. Do it yourself and you have the real thing.

In the UK the syrup to use is black treacle (Tate and Lyle’s is the usual tin) or molasses if you have it, which are close cousins. Golden syrup will not do the same job here: it is lighter, sweeter and has none of the dark, mineral edge, so it gives you a sweeter sugar without the brown-sugar character. If golden syrup is all you have, see my note on it below.

How to make brown sugar at home

Here is what I actually do.

1. Tip the white sugar into a bowl. Granulated or caster both work; caster blends a touch more smoothly.
2. Add the treacle: 1 tablespoon per 200g for light brown, 2 tablespoons per 200g for dark. Treacle is sticky, so warming the spoon under the hot tap for a second helps it slide off.
3. Work it in with the back of a fork or your fingertips until the colour is even and there are no dark streaks. It takes a minute or two and goes from pale speckled to uniformly tan.
4. Use it straight away, or keep it in an airtight jar. It stores just like bought brown sugar.

A rough weight guide if you prefer grams: 1 tablespoon of treacle is about 20g. You do not need to be precise. A little more treacle makes it darker and softer, a little less makes it paler and drier, and neither will wreck a bake.

If you need to scale a recipe up or down while you are at it, the recipe scaler does the arithmetic, and the ingredient converter handles cups-to-grams if your recipe is American.

When plain white sugar is fine

Plenty of the time you can skip the treacle and just use white sugar, measured one for one. The sweetness is the same; sugar is sugar. What you lose is flavour and moisture.

It barely matters in:

• a crumble topping
• most sponge cakes, where the brown-sugar flavour is a background note at most
• anything already strongly flavoured (a spiced cake, a fruit loaf), where you will not miss it

It matters more in:

• chewy cookies and flapjacks, where brown sugar’s moisture is doing real work on the texture. White sugar alone gives a crisper, flatter, less chewy result
• anything that leans on the flavour, like sticky toffee pudding, gingerbread or a proper banana bread, where that treacly depth is half the point

So if the recipe is one where brown sugar is a headline ingredient, take the extra minute and make the proper substitute. If it is a bit part, white sugar will not let you down.

The swaps I would skip

A few suggestions float around that are not worth it in a normal home kitchen.

• Golden syrup stirred into white sugar. It will darken the sugar slightly but it adds extra liquid and extra sweetness without the right flavour, and it can throw off the wet-to-dry balance in a bake. If golden syrup is genuinely all you have, use plain white sugar for the brown sugar and leave the syrup out, rather than trying to fake it.
• Coconut sugar as a like-for-like. It is lovely stuff and roughly swaps one for one, but it is drier than brown sugar and most people do not have a bag sitting about. If you did, you would probably have brown sugar too.
• Honey or maple syrup. These are liquids, so you cannot swap them straight for a dry sugar without rebalancing the whole recipe. Not a quick fix.

The other way round: brown sugar instead of white

The question often comes up in reverse, so it is worth answering here. Yes, you can usually use brown sugar in place of white, one for one, and in many recipes it is an upgrade. It brings a little moisture and a gentle caramel flavour that suits cookies, flapjacks and anything spiced. Two things to expect: the bake will be a shade darker, and in delicate recipes where you want a pure, clean sweetness or a pale crumb, a light sponge or a plain shortbread, the molasses flavour and colour will show. For meringues and anything where you are whisking sugar into egg whites, stick with white; brown sugar’s moisture and acidity can stop the meringue setting up properly. Everywhere else, swap away.

A note on hardened brown sugar

Half the time the problem is not that you are out, it is that the bag has set like a brick. Do not bin it. Drop a slice of fresh bread or a wedge of apple into the bag, seal it, and leave it overnight; the sugar draws the moisture and softens. In a hurry, microwave the lump next to a cup of water in short bursts and break it up with a fork while it is warm. It is the molasses drying out that makes brown sugar harden, which is also why your homemade version keeps best in an airtight jar.

Related reading

• Caster Sugar Substitute
• Golden Syrup Substitute
• Baking Ingredient Substitutions
• How to Make Self-Raising Flour

The short version: brown sugar is white sugar plus treacle, so you can make exactly what you need in a bowl. One tablespoon of treacle per 200g for light, two for dark. And when the recipe does not hang on it, plain white sugar will see you through.