Sugar is edible, crystalline (usually sucrose, lactose, & fructose), fattening, causes tooth decay, is addictive, but we love it! It’s a basic food carbohydrate made from sugar cane and sugar beet, but can also be found in many other foods like fruit, honey, maple syrup and so on. Today we bring you part 1 of a series on sugar and look at where it was discovered, when we started eating it and what it is. We can blame the Polynesians for starting it all as they’ve been using sugar on their islands for more than 5000 years.  They discovered sugar cane and they found out that it was filled with a sweet liquid

that could be used in food. From there it went to India where in AD 350, during the Gupta Dynasty, the Indians learnt how to crystallize sugar and used it exclusively for culinary and exporting purposes until Darius the King of Persia arrived to conquer India. Until that time the Persians were quite happy with honey and used it to sweeten their food. Sadly, not realizing how healthy honey was, they used much less honey from then on because they believed that the bees actually got it from the sugar cane!

ISRAELI CHOCOLATE CAKE

This is the ultimate in chocolate cakes – it’s extremely rich so take care – too much is too much!

Ingredients

• 150g prunes, pitted
• 200g dark chocolate (Lindt 75%)
• 100g plain flour
• 150g caster sugar
• 150g butter, chopped
• 3 eggs, separated
• 3 tbsp whisky
• butter for greasing
• 1 tsp vanilla extract

For the icing

• 100g hazelnut chocolate, finely chopped (Lindt make a good one)
• 50g butter, chopped
• unsweetened cocoa powder for sifting
• 8 chocolate truffles – try to use ones from a reliable chocolatier

Method

Pre-heat oven to 180C

Grease a 20 cm deep-sided cake tin

• Dice the prunes finely and soak in brandy for 2 hours.
• Beat the egg yolks, sugar and vanilla for 4 minutes until light, fluffy and pale.
• Melt the dark chocolate over hot water and when half-melted, remove the pot from the heat, add the chopped butter and stir gently until everything is smooth and melted.
• Add the chocolate mixture to the beaten eggs until well incorporated and sift in the flour, combining everything well.
• Add the prunes and brandy and stir until everything is smooth and silky.
• Whisk the egg whites to soft peak stage and fold into the mixture gently.
• Pour into the cake tin and bake for 30-35 minutes until firm and crisp on top and still slightly soft inside.
• Cool in the tin and only then remove.

ICING

• Melt the butter in a heatproof bowl over a pan of simmering water.
• Add the diced hazelnut chocolate until it’s just melting, remove from the heat and stir both butter and chocolate gently until smooth and thick.
• Spread the icing over the top of the cake.
• Arrange truffles on top and allow the icing to set before you eat.

CALIPH’S DELIGHT

This is a simple dessert but delicious – we had some a few nights ago and couldn’t get enough

Ingredients

• 250 ml pure white  sugar
• 125 ml pine nuts
• 375 ml semolina
• 500 ml water
• 1 lemon, juice only
• 115 g butter
• ground cinnamon to taste
• heavy cream to taste

Method

• Combine the water, lemon juice and sugar in a saucepan, bring to the boil and simmer for 15 minutes.
• Melt the butter and lightly sauté the pine nuts.
• Add the semolina and cook over a low heat until the semolina turns light brown – it should take 4 – 5 minutes.
• Remove from the heat and stir in the syrup.
• Return to a low heat, stir well and cook for a further 5 – 10 minutes until the mixture is thick and silky
• Transfer this mixture to a serving dish to set, sift over the cinnamon and cover with whipped heavy cream.

It may also be eaten cold.

When the Arabs invaded Persia in 642 AD they came across the sugar cane, studied the agricultural processes and quickly learnt how sugar was made. Being an industrious nation, they established sugar production in the countries they conquered and started using it voraciously in their food. They were the first to turn sugar into an industry and also set up the first large plantations, large scale sugar mills, refineries and factories. In the 11th century, the Crusaders took sugar to Europe.  With the Europeans colonizing the Americas, the Caribbean became the world’s largest source of sugar because, thanks to the cruel practice of slave labour, sugar could be produced at prices vastly lower than those of cane sugar imported from the East. Factories were set up everywhere and thousands of mills produced tons of sugar.  In the years between 1625 and 1750, sugar became as expensive as gold!   It was sold in solid cones and consumers used a sugar nip, a pliers-like tool, to break off pieces.

Andreas Marggraf discovered that beet root contained sucrose in 1747 and his student Franz Achard built a sugar beet processing factory in Silesia, but it was only during the Napoleonic Wars, when France and the continent were cut off from Caribbean sugar that the sugar beet industry really took off. Today beets provid 30% of the world’s sugar.  Today the world consumes about 120 million tons of sugar, expanding a rate of about 2 million tons per annum, most of it used for unnecessary foodstuffs – a sad state of affairs when one takes into account that this money that could be spent on feeding the starving millions.

The European Union, Brazil and India are the top three producers and together account for some 40% of the world annual production – only 25% of the sugar can be exported from each country because the rest is consumed internally. In European Union sugar prices are so heavily subsidised that over 5 million tons of white beet sugar is exported annually and yet a million tons of raw cane sugar is imported from former colonies as a quid pro quo.  The EU’s over-production and subsequent dumping has now been subjected to GATT requirements which should see a substantial cut-back in production over the next few years.

CULINARY SUGARS

RAW SUGAR.

Yellow or brown sugars made when the source sugar syrup is boiled and dried with heat until it becomes a crystalline solid.  There are three main kinds of raw sugar:

• Demerara
• Muscovado
• Turbinado

Mauritius and Malawi are the main exporters of these specialty sugars and they, often, manufacture raw sugar in loaves and not as crystalline powders. They combine the sugar and the molasses and pour them into molds where they let them dry. These sugar-cakes are called jaggery or gur in India, pingbian tang in China, and panela, panocha, pile, piloncillo and pão-de-açúcar in various parts of Latin America. Cane syrup is very popular in America (see article in New York Times).

RAW BEET SUGAR

Is made by processing sugar beet juice.

• MILL WHITE SUGAR - Also known as plantation white, crystal sugar, or superior sugar is producedwhen raw sugar is bleached white with sulfur dioxide.
• BLANCO DIRECTO - Is found in India and surrounds and is made by removing the impurities from cane juice using a process called phosphatation (a treatment with phosphoric acid and calcium hydroxide) – it’s more pure than mill white, but less pure than white refined sugar.
• WHITE REFINED SUGAR - Is the most common form of sugar in North America and Europe and is by dissolving raw sugar and purifying it with a phosphoric acid method similar to that used for blanco directo and various other processes. It’s usually sold as dried granulated sugar.

GRANULATED SUGAR

Is sold in various crystal sizes (for home and industrial use). It’s commonly sold as:

1. Pearl sugar
2. Decorating sugar
3. Nibbed sugar (sugar nibs that’s supposed to add sparkle and flavour). It sparkles because the sugar forms large crystals that reflect light.
4. Sanding sugar – a large-crystal sugar used for edible decorations – it has larger granules that sparkle when sprinkled on baked goods or sweets and won’t dissolve when heated.
5. Normal granulated sugars – for table use
6. Caster (or castor) used for baking and desserts is sieved a few times. It’s also known as baker’s sugar, berry sugar, or bar sugar
7. Powdered sugar, confectioner’s sugar and icing sugar are made by grinding sugar to a fine powder. Often a small amount of anti-caking agent is added to prevent clumping (cornstarch or tri-calcium phosphate are usually used).

SUGAR CUBES

These are made by mixing sugar crystals with sugar syrup. Jakub Kryštof Rad invented sugarcubes in 1841 in the Austrian Empire (what is now the Czech Republic).

BROWN SUGAR CRYSTALS.

Brown sugars come from the late stages of sugar refining, when sugar forms fine crystals with significant molasses content, or from coating white refined sugar with a cane molasses syrup. Their color and taste become stronger with increasing molasses content, as do their moisture-retaining properties. Brown sugars also tend to harden if exposed to the atmosphere, although proper handling can reverse this.  Natural sugars comprise all completely unrefined sugars: effectively all sugars not defined as free sugars. The WHO Technical Report Series 916 Diet, Nutrition and the Prevention of Chronic Diseases approves only natural sugars as carbohydrates for unrestricted consumption. Natural sugars come in fruit, grains and vegetables in their natural or cooked form.

MERINGUES

This has to be the ultimate in sugar rich desserts – and surely the most delicious.  They are suitable for any occasion – so do try them and see!

Ingredients

• 4 extra- large organic egg whites , at room temperature
• 120 g caster sugar
• 120 g icing sugar

Method

• Preheat the oven to fan 100 C
• Line 2 baking sheets with baking parchment paper.
• Place the egg whites into a large clean porcelain mixing bowl (not plastic).
• Beat them on medium speed with an electric hand whisk until the mixture has reached stiff peak stage.
• At this point, turn up the speed and very gradually add the caster sugar.
• Beat for a few seconds between every addition.
• I suggest you pour a tiny bit, beat and then pour again.
• The reason for doing this slowly and properly is to prevent them from weeping at a later stage – but be careful not to beat to much – you are looking for a thick, glossy, smooth mixture.
• Now sift one third of the icing sugar into the mixture and fold it in with a big metal spoon or rubber spatula.
• Continue to sift and fold in the icing sugar a third at a time and don’t over mix.
• Scoop up the mixture, a little at a time (a dessert spoon makes a comfortable sized meringue) and bake for about 1 ½ hours until the meringues sound crisp when you tap them underneath and are a coffee cream colour.
• Let them cool on a cooling rack.
• In a well sealed, airtight container they should keep for up to 2 weeks.
• Serve with oodles of whipped cream.