Sugar in Clementine Cake

Asked by rachhaworth. Answered on 24th January 2016

Full question

Nigella's Clementine Cake recipe calls for "white sugar". Does she mean granulated sugar or caster sugar? I am coming to this from a UK perspective.

Our answer

Nigella's Clementine Cake recipe (from How To Eat and on the Nigella website) does list just "white sugar" in the UK ingredients and this can be eithere granulated or caster sugar, whichever is most convenient for you. Generally caster (superfine) sugar is used in cake making as the smaller crystals dissolve more easily if the sugar is being creamed with butter or whisked with eggs.

If you are making the cake in a food processor then the sugar sould dissolve fairly well as the cooked clementines are quite liquid and this, combined with the action of the food processor blade, is enough to dissolve the crystals. If you are making the cake in a mixer, or by hand, then it may be easier to use caster sugar as this will dissolve more readily. US granulated sugar has smaller crystals than UK granulated sugar so this sugar would be fine for both the food processor and manual methods.