Same Cake Recipe, Different Sugars

NOTE: Calories in cake come from all ingredients, not just the sweeteners. The difference from slice to slice reflects the relative calorie contribution of each sweetener.

Calories per teaspoon: 16
Calories per slice: 497

The sugar that modern baking was built on. Sugarcane or sugar beet juices are boiled, and molasses extracted. The remaining sugar is bleached and tumbled into crystals of uniform size.

How It Baked: The pound cake made with table sugar was perfectly fluffy, voluminous, and tender. The crust was crisp, flaky, and exquisitely golden.

Raw sugar is what sugar makers get before they further break it down and whiten it to make table sugar. The amber-colored crystals are larger than those of table sugar, are irregularly shaped, and still contain molasses.

How It Baked: This cake didn't rise as well because the larger crystals don't break down easily to help lift the cake. It was dense and less tender, but altogether decent.

Coconut sugar, also known as coconut palm sugar, is made from the flower buds of the coconut palm tree. Like other coconut products, it's hot right now, and, like coconut oil, has a health-food halo.

How It Baked: Coconut sugar turned the ivory cake dark brown. Its slight moisture content made for a lumpy texture, and the cake was done 30 minutes early. It was significantly less sweet than others.

This popular zero-calorie sweetener is derived from a South American plant of the same name. Pure, it can be 300 times sweeter than sugar, but most varieties are made to be about twice as sweet. It's not meant to be used as a 1-for-1 sugar substitution in baking, as this slice shows.

How It Baked: Roughly the same size as the white- sugar version, but the texture was like dry, compacted sand—no air, no tenderness. No browning happened. Intense sweetness finished bitter.

A starchy bulking agent called maltodextrin is sometimes added to zero-calorie sweeteners to make them more closely match table sugar's sweetness level in cup-for-cup use.

How It Baked: Though it sank in the pan, this moist cake was actually much better than the one made with non-baking stevia. The powdery sub instantly dissolved into the batter, so it didn't incorporate air when mixed with butter like sugar does. The sweetness level was fine.

Golden liquid sweetener made from flower nectar by honeybees

How It Baked: Most honey contains roughly 18% water, so the cake was spongy and too moist. Honey also has a lower smoke point, so it browns quickly—our cake was done 25 minutes ahead of the recipe.