Rapadura Sugar

I wanted to share some information about the type of sugar you will see included in many of my recipes.  It is called Rapadura Sugar and it is much better for you than traditionally bleached and refined table sugar.  Here is a description of it straight out of Sally Fallon's Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and the Diet Dictocrats:

"Rapadura is the commercial name for dehydrated cane sugar juice, which the people of India have used for thousands of years.  It is rich in minerals, particularly silica.  Rapadura has a wonderful flavor and closely mimics sugar in chemical properties.  It gives the best results for cookies and cakes but be careful not to overdo - in large amounts Rapadura can upset the body chemistry just as much as sugar."

You can purchase a sugar which contains the entirety of this cane sugar juice, including beneficial vitamins and minerals which are not found in bleached, refined table sugar.  This Rapadura Organic Whole Sugar is available at Amazon.com through this link. I have looked for it at local health food stores, but was not able to find it at any near us. Here's a picture of the nutrition facts from the back of a bag:

As you can see, a teaspoon of this sugar contains 11% of your daily value of iron and 2% of your daily value of vitamin c.  I love that!  This still needs to be used in moderation of course, but it is wonderful that you get some valuable nutrition from it!

Want to see what it looks like?  Here's my storage container I use to hold Rapadura Sugar in my own kitchen:

This sugar can be used in equal amounts to replace any table sugar or brown sugar called for in a recipe.  It imparts a flavor rather like molasses, but it fits very well with many recipes, especially oatmeal raisin cookies!  I personally order mine on the subscribe-and-save option at Amazon as that gives you a better deal per bag.  We don't use a lot of sugar, so I can space my orders out quite a bit.  Try it out and see what you think!