Reading an old cookbook from the 70s and the amount of sugar in their 'standard' cake recipe shocked me

It called for nearly double what I use now. Anyone else notice how recipes have shifted over the decades?

3 comments

3 Comments

wood.zara2mo ago

Right? My grandma's cookie recipes are pure sugar bombs.

avery6292mo ago

My great aunt's recipe literally calls for two whole cups of brown sugar, it's wild.

ward.mason6d ago

Wait you guys think this is some kind of crisis? People act like granulated sugar is poison or something. Most of those old recipes are fine, you just don't eat a whole cake every day. My aunt still makes that 70s pound cake with like 3 cups of sugar and nobody's died yet. The sugar drop is mostly because we all got scared by nutrition labels and health blogs, not because the recipes were actually broken. Buttercream frosting used to have more sugar than you'd eat in a week and it was just dessert, not a health hazard. Plus half the time when people say they cut sugar they just add more vanilla or something to fake the sweetness anyway. So its basically the same taste with extra steps. I'll take grandma's sugar bomb over some sad keto cake any day. Life's too short to panic over a cup of sugar in a recipe thats supposed to be a treat.