What to use instead of brown sugar
It depends entirely on what it's doing in the dish. Here's the job, what else does it, and what to skip.
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Sugar plus molasses in a cookie or cake
The molasses is acidic and holds water, so it feeds baking soda for lift and keeps the cookie chewy for days instead of snapping.
White sugar + molassesRan out
1 cup white sugar + 1 tbsp molasses for light brown, 2 tbsp for dark
Identical once mixed. Rub it together with your fingers until there are no dark streaks left.
White sugar on its ownRan out
1:1
Paler, crisper and flatter. It spreads more and goes hard rather than chewy, and the soda loses its acid so the lift drops.
Coconut sugarRan out
1:1 by weight
Drier and much less sticky, so the cookie is crumblier. Tastes of caramel and toasted grain.
MuscovadoRan out
1:1 by weight
Far wetter and stronger. Denser darker crumb and molasses dominating everything else in the recipe.
Turbinado or demeraraRan out
1:1 by weight
Coarse crystals that never fully dissolve, giving a sandy crunch, and almost none of the molasses moisture.
What doesn't work: Maple syrup measured one for one. It is a liquid, so the dough loses its structure, the cookies spread into a single sheet, and there is no crystalline sugar left to crisp the edges.
Deep sweetness in a savoury glaze or barbecue sauce
Molasses puts a bitter mineral floor under the sweetness and browns faster than white sugar, which is what gives a rib its dark sticky bark.
White sugar + molassesRan out
1 cup sugar + 2 tbsp molasses
No difference in the finished sauce.
Jaggery or piloncillo, gratedRan out
1:1 by weight
More mineral and faintly smoky, which suits a chile-based sauce better than a ketchup-based one.
Maple syrupRan out
3/4 cup per 1 cup packed brown sugar, and cut other liquid by 2 tbsp
Thinner sauce with clear maple flavour, and it chars sooner over direct flame.
HoneyRan out
3/4 cup per 1 cup, and cut other liquid by 2 tbsp
Floral and the fastest of these to blacken. Keep it off direct heat and brush it on late.
Date syrupRan out
1:1
Fruity and less sweet, and the sauce goes very dark very quickly.
What doesn't work: Coconut sugar in a wet marinade expecting the same stickiness. It has no molasses syrup in it, so once the water cooks off the glaze goes dry and powdery instead of lacquered.
Brown sugar is measured packed unless a recipe says otherwise, and a loosely spooned cup is roughly a third short.