Making cheesecake with molasses sugar.

I am on a low carb low sugar diet, which means eliminating white and refined products and processed foods as much as I can from my life.

So mommy (and my husband, too) are growing sterner with me when I begged for ice cream, ais kacang, cakes and ... repeat.

Blergh.

Mom said I could bake cakes, ONLY if the sugar amount was cut back very drastically.

You know how hard it is to bake WITHOUT granulated sugar.

So I have resorted to using the darker varieties of brown sugar - in this case, molasses sugar. Molasses are present in your typical packaged brown sugar, the colour depth varying with its molasses content. I was looking for muscovado sugar at the organic store but they only had molasses sugar and unrefined cane sugar for my replacements. 

Can anyone enlighten me on the differences between muscovado and molasses sugar?

Brown sugars contain more moisture than white sugar, therefore the dryness of white sugar is extremely crucial in making a cake with light texture.

On the other hand, instead of using my regular full cream milk, I have replaced it with low fat high calcium milk.

This recipe requires one to beat egg whites with sugar until soft peaks form. I actually whipped until firm peaks are formed. It takes a longer time to attain this with molasses sugar than you would regularly with granulated sugar.

I obtained 16 servings from this recipe.

Table below is the nutrition content of the cake. Take note that I did not include carbohydrates from the flours and protein from the eggs.

For the cotton cheesecake:

250g cream cheese, softened

3 egg yolks

100g milk (original recipe calls for 50g milk with 100g yogurt, if you are using brown sugar like I did, subtract liquid from your recipe)

40g low protein flour

10g corn flour

3 egg whites

30g molasses sugar (original recipe calls for 60g sugar)

1. Preheat oven to 150°C.

2. Mix cream cheese with milk, making sure cheese is dissolved and distributed evenly.

3. Add in yolks to cheese mixture and mix well.

4. Sieve flours over cheese mixture and mix well. 

5. Beat egg whites until foamy, then add sugar in 3 batches, beating until firm peaks form.

6. Fold egg whites into cheese mixture.

7. Pour cake into an 8" tin. Bake in a water bath for 90 minutes or until skewer comes out clean when inserted.

For more information about different types of sugar and what sugar does in baking, have a read at Joy of Baking - http://www.joyofbaking.com/sugar.html.