Sticky toffee pudding - a wonderful Scottish treat - uses both caster sugar and muscovado sugar. On our first attempt to make it, we scoured the Web for definitions. You just don't see these words in US cookbooks, nor can you find the products in most US food stores. We used "raw" sugar for the muscovado and ran regular refined sugar through a cuisinart to produce a facsimile of caster sugar. The results were delicious! We have since learned that using regular refined sugar does just as well as using caster, and that you can fake the muscovado by adding a dash of molassas to refined sugar. Celiacs in the crowd may also be happy to know that sticky toffee pudding can be made with any combination of substitute flours.
And cardamom is good for stomachs, however you spell it. Drop a pod in your tea cup and reuse it until the flavor is all gone. Then you can break out the seeds and use them in cooking to eke out the last bit of essence.
