Welcome to Kitchen Queries, where the nigella.com team will answer your cooking or food related questions.  We’d love you to submit some of your recipe problems, dilemmas or queries for us to get our teeth into!

Please note, we are only able to answer questions selected for publication and aren't able to enter into personal correspondence.

• Golden Syrup

  In Italy I cannot find golden syrup but maple syrup is available, is this ok to use as a substitute?

  Posted by anitaz. Answered on 16th Jun 2012 at 12.00

  From the nigella team:

  We understand that golden syrup may be availble in Esselunga supermarkets, so if you have one in your area then it is worth checking there (it may be with other British and International ingredients rather than with sugars so you may need to search a bit or ask). Also as maple syrup is usually quite expensive you may want to consider using honey instead.

  Golden syrup is more viscous than both maple syrup and honey so it depends on the recipe as to whether these are good substitutes for golden syrup. Where only a small amount of golden syrup is used then it is fine to use substitutes. In cakes, such as sticky ginger cake, honey works well. For flapjacks and oat/museli bars you may find that the texture is much crumblier using maple syrup or honey so sometimes you have to lower the oven temperature and cook them for slightly longer. For treacle tarts the filling will tend to be slightly runny if a substute is used and also both honey and maple syrup have fairly strong flavours so we do not suggest attempting a substitute for these dishes.

  Add Bookmark facebook twitter Print share