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TODAY IN FOOD: It’s Molasses Bar Day

February 8, 2008 at 12:20 pm · Filed under Food Holidays, Honey-Sugar-Syrup

Molasses
Dark molasses.		  

If you’d like to bake molasses bars to celebrate National Molasses Bar Day (February 8th), you can find many recipes online. But first: What is molasses?

Known in the U.K. as treacle, it’s a thick syrup produced as a by-product during the refining of sugar cane. Molasses is the residue that is left after the sugar crystals are extracted (i.e., molasses is produced when no more sugar may be economically crystallized by conventional means).

Molasses is predominantly sucrose, with some glucose and fructose. It is 65% as sweet as sugar. About 80% of the world’s molasses comes from sugar cane, with the remaining 20% coming from sugar beets.

 
The better grades, such as New Orleans drip molasses and Barbados molasses, are unreprocessed and contain more sucrose, making them lighter in color> They are used in cooking and confectionery and in the production of rum.

  • Light molasses comes from the first boiling of the cane; it is also called sweet molasses and is used as pancake syrup or a sweetener.
  • Dark molasses from the second boiling; it is more flavorful and less sweet than light molasses, and often used for gingerbread and spice cookies.
  • lackstrap molasses, the lowest grade, comes from the third boiling; it is strong and bitter, and mainly used in mixed cattle feed and in the manufacture of industrial alcohol.
  • Sulfured molasses, has had sulfur dioxide added as a preservative (or, the sulfur in the manufacturing process is retained in the molasses).

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    Read more in our Sugar & Syrup Glossary.
      




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