Using White Sugar + Molasses Instead of Brown Sugar (packed)
Ratio
1 cup white sugar + 1 tbsp molasses (light) or 2 tbsp (dark)
Excellent — nearly identical results
Measurement Variance Note
For 1 cup references, this ingredient can vary by about 8% across brands and measuring methods (184g-216g per cup). For the most reliable substitution result, measure by weight and test a half batch first.
What changes when you swap brown sugar (packed) for white sugar + molasses
Strip the molasses out of chocolate chip cookies and the dough spreads thinner, the edges go glassier, and the centres lose that pliable chew by the second day. Granulated sugar is roughly 99.9% sucrose with zero hygroscopic load, so a 1:1 swap pulls about 3-4% moisture out of the finished crumb and removes the mild acidity (pH ~5) that brown sugar uses to coax baking soda into a darker, more open structure.
- Cookies bake flatter and crisper rather than chewy-domed — Toll House drops lose roughly 2-3mm of height once the molasses isn't there to hold water in the crumb.
- Banana bread and oatmeal cookies lose their caramel-toffee depth; without 5-10% molasses by weight, the sweetness reads one-note and the crust browns paler.
- If the recipe leans on baking soda alone, add 1 tbsp molasses per cup of white sugar — otherwise the soda has no acid to react with and you'll taste a soapy, metallic edge.