When cooking with agave nectar—and significantly when substituting agave nectar for various sweeteners—it’s helpful to don’t forget that agave nectar is principally extreme fructose corn syrup that comes from a cactus fairly than from corn.
Which means it has the equivalent power, sweetness, and consistency as extreme fructose corn syrup. If you understand that, it makes substituting it in your truffles, cookies and completely different desserts rather more easy.
What’s Agave Nectar?
Agave nectar is about 60 % fructose, 20 % glucose, and 20 % water. This makes it roughly equal to extreme fructose corn syrup on the subject of its fructose content material materials, its power, its sweetness, and the reality that it’s a liquid.
Thus agave nectar will act equivalent to extreme fructose corn syrup, which suggests that when attempting to substitute agave nectar in recipes that use completely different sweeteners, it’s best to take motion in recipes that already identify for corn syrup, like pecan pie, peanut brittle, and cooked frostings, along with marinades like this pork rib marinade.
Now, just because it acts the equivalent as corn syrup does not imply it tastes exactly the equivalent. Merely as darkish and lightweight corn syrups look and elegance completely completely different from each other, along with from completely different liquid sweeteners like honey, maple syrup and molasses, agave nectar has its private distinct style.
This style is further pronounced inside the darker variations of agave nectar, however it absolutely’s noticeable inside the lighter ones, too.
Normally, though, when substituting agave nectar for liquid sweeteners like honey, maple syrup, corn syrup, or molasses, you’ll be able to accomplish that on a 1:1 basis.
Substituting Agave for White Sugar
Usually, though, you may want to use agave nectar reasonably than granulated sugar, and that’s the place it is a should to do some conversions.
Proper right here, we adhere to the 75 % rule, which suggests you make the most of 3/4 the amount of liquid sweetener by amount as granulated sugar. This happens to be the rule for substituting any liquid sweetener for granulated sugar, along with corn syrup, honey, molasses or maple syrup.
That’s solely part of the equation, nonetheless. The other half has to do with the alternative liquids in your recipe. On account of agave nectar is 20 % water, you will have to chop again the amount of liquid elsewhere inside the recipe.
So if a recipe requires a cup of sugar, you’d use 3/4 cup of agave nectar and reduce 2 tablespoons of liquid.
Substituting Agave Nectar for Brown Sugar
When substituting agave nectar for brown sugar, the strategy is a bit completely completely different. The three/4 ratio stays the equivalent, which means you’d use 3/4 cup of agave nectar for each cup of brown sugar the recipe requires. Nevertheless since brown sugar is already moist, you needn’t reduce the liquid inside the recipe pretty as so much—if the least bit. A tablespoon a lot much less must be hundreds.
Nevertheless keep in mind too that brown sugar in a recipe moreover contributes shade along with sweetness and moisture, so proper right here is the place you’ll consider using darker agave nectar as a substitute of sunshine. Nevertheless take into account that darker agave syrup has a stronger style than lighter.
Reducing the Liquid
Not every recipe makes use of the equivalent liquid, so there isn’t a exhausting and fast rule for what ingredient to utilize a lot much less of when making an attempt to eliminate that further 2 tablespoons. Nevertheless on the entire, assume on the subject of parts which will be made up of water, resembling milk and eggs, fairly than liquid fats like cooking oil. That’s on account of with milk and eggs (merely as with corn syrup and agave nectar), the water content material materials evaporates inside the kind of steam, whereas oil stays inside the meals.
So in case your recipe requires milk, use 2 tablespoons a lot much less milk. It’s a bit trickier with eggs since regular large eggs can be found discrete fashions of spherical 3 1/4 tablespoons each. Nevertheless you’ll beat the egg, spoon out two tablespoons of the liquid egg and do one factor else with it.
Understand that making these quite a few minor changes goes to affect the recipe. How so much? It depends upon. Nevertheless that’s the reason it’s a good suggestion to make the recipe as quickly as as written sooner than making changes to it.
Contemplate it this way: in case you make a recipe and there’s one factor off about it, one factor tastes not pretty correct, when you go to troubleshoot it, it’s a lot less complicated to find out what’s completely completely different in case you have tasted it as quickly as one of the simplest ways it was written and you have solely modified one issue inside the recipe. In case you have made quite a lot of changes, it makes it extra sturdy to find out what went flawed.
Substituting All or Half?
One different methodology to substituting agave nectar for various sweeteners is to swap out solely half of the called-for sweetener. In several phrases, for each cup of sugar, you’d as a substitute use half a cup of sugar plus 6 fluid ounces (about 12 tablespoons) of agave nectar. On this case you’d solely wish to depart out a tablespoon of liquid, which is minimal enough so that you just will not ought to hassle the least bit.
Some recipes fare increased with this form of substitution than others. With truffles, for example, you’ll substitute half the sugar, nevertheless with cookies, you may want to try swapping out 1/3 as a substitute.