Brown Sugar

Let me tell you about brown sugar, and why it never behaves like the white sugar sitting next to it.

White sugar runs clean and dry through your fingers. Brown sugar clumps. Press a handful and it should pack together like wet sand, holding the shape of your fist — never crumbling into loose grains. That's how you know it's good, no scale needed. Watch it go into the pan, too. It turns a deeper, almost smoky brown, and the smell that rises off it is warmer, rounder, than anything white sugar gives you. Bake with it and the cookies feel softer in your hand, chewier at the bite.

Choose it by feel and smell, not by the shade on the package. Good brown sugar is soft, moist, almost sticky to the touch. Smell it — it should carry a warm, rummy sweetness, never a flat, dusty nothing.

Some people say light and dark brown sugar are just a matter of color — pick whichever. No! The dark one brings more weight, more pull of molasses in the smell and on the tongue. Reach for the light one where the recipe calls for dark, and your caramel sauce comes out a shade paler, your spice cake quieter than you meant it to be.