What fruits keep their sweetness when baking?
I want to replace sugar with fresh fruit when baking. What fruit would produce the most sweetness? The fruit should not produce an undesirable flavor and be easy enough to buy in Florida.
Edit: Kiwis caused me to think this.
Best Answer
You cannot simply replace sugar with fresh fruit in baking recipes. Sugar is, well, 100% sugar.
Fruit is mostly water, on the order of 70-90% depending on the particular fruit in question. The remainder is usually sugars, starches and pectins for the most part.
Any recipe not specifically designed to be sweetened with fruit is going to fail spectacularly if you try to substitute. To do so, you would have to calculate the water weight in the added fruit and remove it form elsewhere in the recipe (if there is enough liquid elsewhere in the recipe to do so) at the very least.
Sugar is also extremely important to the structure and moisture retention of baked goods (with the notable exception of yeast raised breads), and simply substituting it out is going to have a deleterious effect on the texture.
Instead, you should search out recipes that are sweetened in a manner that meets whatever requirements you have. Applesauce and cooked down pears, as well as bananas might be suitable, but it would depend on the specific application.
In any case, almost no sugar will be lost during baking; all fruits will retain essentially all of their sugar.
Except at the very edge of the baked good, where browning occurs (indicating caramelization and the Maillard reaction are taking place), the sugar will be unchanged by the baking process. The amount of sugar lost to browning in the crust is vanishingly small.
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Quick Answer about "What fruits keep their sweetness when baking?"
Citric fruits: Oranges, lemons, tangerines, grapefruits and limes are all used in baking to counterbalance sweetness and provide a nice acidic tang to the final product. They are used in making tarts, jellies, ice creams, confectionary and many varieties of desserts.How do you sweeten baked goods with fruit?
Dried fruit, like prunes and dates, are another good way to naturally sweeten baked goods. You can puree prunes or dates and add them in place of sugar, or reduce the amount of sugar and add prunes or dates instead. Other dried fruits you can use are raisins, apricots, berries, or cherries.What fruit can replace sugar in baking?
Fruits such as bananas, figs and dates can make excellent additions to a low-sugar diet. If you enjoy the flavor of bananas, you'll enjoy more fiber and potassium with this option. Figs and dates provide minerals such as calcium and iron, and raisins are another good sugar substitute.What adds sweetness and flavor to baked products?
Sugar gives cakes and other baked products sweetness and is used in many forms and many ways. In yeast raised products, sugar acts as food for the yeast. In cakes, sugar assists with the aeration and stabilising of batters.What fruits can be used as sweeteners?
How to sweeten your baked goods with Fruits and vegetables- Ripe bananas: I love having very ripe bananas in my kitchen most of the time. ...
- Dates: These babies are a delicious addition baked goods, like brownies. ...
- Apple sauce and apples: Apple sauce (or blended apples) can help sweeten up many dishes.
How to keep packed Sweet Soft Bakery Products fresh for longer
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Answer 2
I love to use raisins because they are so, so sweet when backing! Now, of course it depends on the product you're trying to create... but believe me that raisins are really sweet and tasty when baked!
Answer 3
It was just the kiwis. Peaches benefit from heat.
Experiment: 4 fruit each sliced 4 ways for tasting at fresh, heated, slightly browned and half burnt. Some mount of cooked left over to compare when cooled again.
Fresh; mandarin sweetest then yellow mango, and kiwi & peach tied. Heated; peach strongly improves to almost mango sweetness. kiwi tastes slightly less sweet. mandarin becomes bitter. Slightly browned; all fruit same relative sweetness as 'heated' but sweetness clearly reduced. Burned; I guess the black bubbles are caused by sugar burning. Peach and orange had most big black bubbles per weight with kiwi having some and mango almost none. The mango probably did not burn enough. Microwaving mango did not cause such bubbling, only dried it more. Everything tasted much less sweet.
Ree-cooled: burned clearly least sweet. forgot to keep enough not cooked fruit pieces. Kiwi; browned tastes sweeter Mandarin; tie Peach; browned tastes sweeter Mango; tie Heated; mandarin mango peach kiwi Browned; mandarin mango peach kiwi
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