Sugar in a cake is not only sweetness

Why it is in baking

Cut a third of the sugar from a sponge and you often get a dry crumb, not a virtuous cake. Yeast dough without a pinch of sweet rises poorly. Jam without enough sugar will not set and will sour fast. This is not a lecture — it is why Natalia's recipe is written that way, not ‘minus half by eye’.

Where you can use less

• Compote and berries with pancakes — the fruit is already sweet, sugar to taste in the cup
• Tea and coffee — a spoon each, not ‘one more while you stir’
• A sweet cream: you can swap part for curd, but not all the sugar at once
• Honey, maple, ‘coconut sugar’ are still sugar. We use them for flavour, not as a halo

A feast day may be sweet

A poppy-seed loaf, sugar rings with tea, a birthday cake — that is not Tuesday supper. We do not weigh every gram on a feast table. We simply do not make a feast of every Wednesday.