Packed vs. Unpacked Brown Sugar

I have noticed that some recipes say to pack brown sugar and some don’t specify. Is it important?

Yes. Our recipes always specify packed because packed and unpacked cups of brown sugar will contain different amounts. To prove our point, we had 10 test cooks measure 2 cups of brown sugar: one packed and one not packed. We weighed each sample and found that, on average, a packed cup of light brown sugar weighs about 2 ounces more than a cup that is not packed. That 2-ounce difference accounts for almost 30 percent of the weight of a cup.

To illustrate the difference, we baked the test kitchen’s recipe for brown sugar cookies with both packed and loose brown sugar. The cookies made with packed brown sugar were chewy and properly cracked on top, while the ones made with loose brown sugar were pale, cakey rather than chewy, and lost their appealing fissured, crackled tops.

THE BOTTOM LINE  Pack the brown sugar when a recipe says to.