Whatsit Wednesday: Cassonade sugar

We have been gluten-free for quite some years now, but I still love me a nice cake where possible. Shirley always comes up with some amazing gluten-free possibilities. Pumpkin pie is one of my favorites and she always surprises me with a pie when she can. Most recently when we were shopping she let me know that she was looking for brown sugar for another specialty she was wanting to make. 

When we are in the US, brown sugar is not hard to find. But in Belgium and the Netherlands there are different types of sugar. The main sugar factory for Belgium is in the city of Tienen where, years ago, we held some youth weekends (in the city, not the sugar factory). When I lived in Haarlem as a very young man, I would bicycle past the sugar factory in the town of Halfweg on the way to Amsterdam. Sugar has been around for a long time and is of course well-known in two countries where chocolate reigns supreme. 

But brown sugar is a different story. I remember getting my coffee while visiting at a home in the Netherlands years ago - when I still drank coffee with milk and sugar. They brought out sugar lumps, but they were brown. It was cane sugar - instead of sugar from sugar beets (which is more common here). Many people considered it more “natural” - although there is certainly nothing natural about eating sugar. 

This cane sugar was brown, but it was not brown sugar - if you know what I mean. Shirley was looking for brown sugar for her baking recipe. In Belgium this is “cassonade”. This is beet sugar mixed with a form of molasses and is not only darker brown but mixes more easily in recipes (I am told). 

In 1953 the sugar factory in Tienen, Belgium, took over the Graeffe company and their cassonade, but kept the packaging which has almost always had a picture or drawing of a child on the front. Because of this it was called “kinnekessuiker” or “kiddie sugar”. The actual name - Cassonade - means “broken”. In the store you now shop for Cassonade Graeffe. 

I don’t really care that much what it is made of or what it was called or even which kid originally was on the packaging (it was a kid from Brussels). And to be honest, Shirley is usually looking for the even darker sugar (called bastard sugar) which is also in both countries. What I am excited about is what she can do with it. Last month she made a sort of spice cake (gluten-free of course) and it was delicious. What a treat!.