Sticky Toffee Pudding

Our answer

There is a significant difference between demerara (turbinado) sugar and dark muscovado sugar (dark brown sugar). Demerara sugar is a granulated raw cane sugar. It has much larger crystals than soft brown sugars. It also has a much milder flavour than dark muscovado, which has molasses added to it, and dark muscovado also has more moisture in it.

We would not recommend switching to use demerara sugar in the Easy Sticky Toffee Pudding (from Nigella Express). The differences above mean that there is a risk that if demerara sugar is used then the cake portion of the pudding will be dry and also will have crystals of sugar in the cake and the sauce will not be sufficiently rich and toffee-like.

Demerara sugar has a nice crunch to it and where you could use it is as a sprinkling sugar on cereals and porridge (oatmeal). You can also sprinkle a little over muffins or cookies before baking, to give a crunch to them - Nigella uses demerara sugar on her Christmas Morning Muffins (from Christmas) and you could also try it on the Banana Butterscotch Muffins (from Nigella Express). Demerara is also a great sugar to use in a crumble topping as it provides both sweetness and a bit of crunchy texture. Nigella uses demerara sugar in her Jumbleberry Crumble (from Nigella Express) but you could also use it as a substitute for brown, caster or granulated sugar in other crumble toppings and it would work well in Nigella's Strawberry and Almond Crumble (from Kitchen).