Essential Ingredient: Sugar  Learn how different sugars enhance
desserts, entrées, breads, and accompaniments.    • Print   • |
• Email  Sugar is indispensable to cooking. It often performs
more than one role in a given recipe. Consider the function of
sugar in a meringue cookie: It stabilizes beaten egg whites so
they maintain their volume during baking, creates the cookie's
characteristic crunch, and then causes the cookie to dissolve
deliciously on the tongue.  Sugar plays multiple roles in
baking. At the simplest level, it imparts sweetness. Beyond
that, it helps create a light, tender crumb: When creamed with
butter for a cake batter, sugar's hard crystal surfaces create
pockets that trap air and expand during cooking, yielding a
fluffy, tender final product.  It also attracts and holds
moisture, so cakes, cookies, and quick breads stay fresher
longer. Sugar inhibits the development of gluten (tough, elastic
proteins) to keep cakes and quick breads tender, as opposed to
chewier biscuits or yeast breads