Sweet!: From Agave to Turbinado, Home Baking with Every Kind of Natural Sugar and Sweetener [Paperback]

Mani Niall (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 7, 2008

Over the last five-plus years, food manufacturers and grocery retailers have helped to make once-obscure sugars and sugar substitutes like muscovado, turbinado, golden syrup, and agave nectar more readily available to U.S. consumers than ever before. Now Sweet! introduces home cooks and bakers to dozens of traditional and cutting-edge sugars and sweeteners that also include jaggery, panela, molasses, cane syrup, and many others. Drawing upon his years of personal and professional experience cooking and baking with these sweeteners, Mani Niall shows home cooks how to take full advantage of the various tastes and textures they provide with more than 100 recipes for cookies and bars, cupcakes and cakes, quickbreads, custards, pies and tarts, candy, and many other treats that showcase each sweetener’s most distinctive qualities.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Niall (Sweet & Natural Baking), expands the world of sweet to home bakers with his extensive knowledge of natural sweeteners and over 100 recipes. Raw sugar such as turbinado, moist brown sugars like demerara and muscovado, and nonsugarcane options like agave syrup and fruit juice concentrates are incorporated in an enticing selection of recipes for cakes, pies, cookies, entrées and more. Niall spans the culinary world with international choices like Thai sticky black rice and mangoes, dulce de leche sandwich cookies and Vietnamese caramel chicken. American favorites such as sweet potatoes with a sorghum glaze, Meyer Lemon Shaker Pi and caramel applesauce cake can also be found. An informative primer and side notes provide additional recipe options, technique tips and nutritional information. This is a unique addition to the baker's shelf. (Dec.)
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Review

Publishers Weekly, 11/3/08
“This is a unique addition to the baker’s shelf.”

Tampa Tribune, 11/30/08
"Offers lots of alternatives for bakers who avoid using processed granulated sugar…Should inspire cooks to experiment with more nutritious ingredients.”

South Bend Tribune, 12/14/08
"When it comes to the bottom line and the final delicious outcome, the trip to the organic food store proves well worth the effort."

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Da Capo Lifelong Books; Original edition (October 7, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1600940048
• ISBN-13: 978-1600940040
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.9 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #913,370 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

33 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Sweet and full of sugar, November 3, 2008

By 

C. Davis - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Sweet!: From Agave to Turbinado, Home Baking with Every Kind of Natural Sugar and Sweetener (Paperback)

I don't doubt that the recipes in this book result in tasty treats but the title is misleading - that is, the subtitle is misleading "From Agave to Turbinado, Home Baking with Every Kind of Natural Sugar and Sweetener." Yeah, I guess "granulated sugar" is "natural" so technically the subtitle is accurate, but I was looking for recipes that used _healthier_ alternatives to granulated sugar - like agave. The vast majority of recipes in this book include granulated sugar and/or brown sugar. Not at all what I was looking for - it's going back to Amazon.

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting but poorly edited., April 29, 2009

By 

M. Bush - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Sweet!: From Agave to Turbinado, Home Baking with Every Kind of Natural Sugar and Sweetener (Paperback)

Mani Niall obviously knows a lot about sweeteners. I got this book to learn more about a variety of sugars, how different sugars react in recipes, etc, and for this, the book is excellent.

However, at least one of the recipes is lacking a key ingredient in the ingredient list. His "Melt-in-Your-Mouth Chocolate Cake with Dulce de Leche" on page 82 sounds delicious. I wanted to make it, so I read the recipe, only to find that he didn't actually list ANY chocolate in the ingredient list. In the instructions, you are told to melt the chocolate and then combine it with the wet ingredients. This is a chocolate cake! Leaving out the chocolate (amount? type?) from the ingredient list is a glaring omission.

Also, in the same recipe, the reader is directed to a Dulce de Leche recipe found later in the book, on page 221. Page 221 contains, not Dulce de Leche, but Sugar Cone Ice Cream Bowls. Those sound tasty, but they're not helpful in making Dulce de Leche. Ultimately I had to look up the Dulce de Leche recipe in the index. Ah-ha! It's on page 204, nowhere near page 221.

These types of errors make it hard to recommend the book as more than a reference tool. If you can't trust the recipes to be correct, there's no point in buying it as a cookbook.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Sweet!" is naturally, fabulously, dizzyingly wonderful!, February 10, 2010

By 

Emily Howe - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Sweet!: From Agave to Turbinado, Home Baking with Every Kind of Natural Sugar and Sweetener (Paperback)

As an avid cookbook reader, healthy eater, and baking connoisseur, I confess, I am a cookbook skeptic, especially when it comes to baking. But "Sweet" delivered triplefold with down-to-earth clear recipes, seductive food photography, and the passionate writing of a true foodie and the deft of a sweetener guru. Academics and readerly types will praise the rich context he provides, such as "A Brief History of Sugar", which provides depth and context.

Unwilling to confine his recipes to the natural food sector of the grocery store and by no means keeping things in the white sugar family, the author navigates the entire sweetener spectrum by keenly choosing exactly the right sweetener for the job, whether molasses for a chewier snack or piloncillo for a more Mexican sweet.

Showcasing natural sweeteners and traditional sugars alike, "Sweet!" marries them tastefully, provocatively, and intriguingly while introducing readers to rarer ingredients with recipes like the Sorghum-glazed Sweet Potatoes or Orange and Fig Spelt Muffins. More common American favorite alternative sweeteners like applesauce represent in desserts like Applesauce Caramel Cake while agave nectar, the present day darling of alternative sweeteners figures heavily in recipes such as (dinner party guest fave) Hempseed-crusted Tofu with Agave-Mustard Sauce. My personal favorite? A flavor-hound's dream: Balsamic strawberry ice cream.

As a frequent dinner party hostess and head of a Bay Area cookbook club, I have already recommended this diverse, enchanting, Sweet(!) cookbook to friends and foodies of all eating preferences and levels of cooking talent.