The Best Molasses Substitute recipe ever with step by step Photos. How I missed molasses or black treacle while baking ginger bread and ginger bread cookies. I have avoided certain recipes in the past because they called for the ingredient “Molasses” which we do not easily get in India. Though very recently, I have substituted it with honey, it was not the same. Something was terribly missing and I was quite sure its because of missing out on Molasses.
So this year before I started making ginger cookies for Christmas season, I decided to learn more about molasses and googled for it. I learned that its a by product obtained from sugarcane juice during the refining process to get sugar.
Since my In-Laws used to have sugarcane plantations and my hubby is well versed in the refining process of sugarcane, he explained to me in detail about the processes that the sugar cane has to go through in order to get jaggery and sugar. Jaggery making is still being practiced in his home town.
Though Maple syrup can be used as a substitute, its very hard to get here and its being sold at gourmet stores at a very high price. So upon his suggestion, I used “Panai Vellam” that’s also called as “Karupatti Vellam”. Do not use “Panai Sarkarai” (Palm sugar) or “Panangal kandu” (Palm Sugar candy) as its not the same as the palm jaggery.
Its a very healthy alternative to the sugar that we use in our day to day life. So even if you have excess syrup after using it in baking, you can very well store it and use it to sweeten your coffee, tea or in beverages replacing the regular sugar.
Do keep in mind to let the syrup cool completely to room temperature if using in a recipe for baking.
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Molasses Substitute Recipe
Ingredients
- Palm jaggery – 250 gms
- Water – ¼ cup
Instructions
- Heat water and add grated or crumbled jaggery. Keep stirring till the jaggery has completely melted.
- Pass it through a sieve to remove any impurities and return the syrup to the same pan.
- Boil the syrup over medium flame stirring occasionally till it reaches one string consistency or thickens.
- Remove from and let it cool down completely. The syrup will further thicken upon cooling.
- Store the syrup in a clean jar and use as required.
Saima
Can I use cane jaggery thats what we get in northern part of India, ..?
Thank you so much. I always bypass recipes using molasses.
Sruthy
Is brown sugar is called as karupatti velam
Can i use it in baking
Hi Sruthy, both are different. you can use, but it will harden the resulting bake and you will need to make a lot of substitutions depending on which one you want to bake.
Ch
I made it but my molasses syrup hardened while cooling down. Why did hardening happened ? And what do I do now ?
Hi, not sure what could be the reason but you can always melt it down by double boiler method which is to place the bowl with hardened molasses into a bowl of boiling water.