These chewy vegan ginger crinkle cookies are rich, even without butter, eggs, or molasses. Instead, prune puree binds together the ingredients  and adds sweetness with less added sugar.

Dried Plum Puree binds together the dry ingredients with the oil and adds sweetness with less sugar for a delicious vegan cookie.

Unlike most types of dried fruit, prunes are sweet partially because they contain sorbitol, a sugar alcohol. With this attribute, prunes and prune ingredients can help lower total sugars in a range of products, from baked goods and bars to sauces, marinades, drinks, and even yogurt products.

Prunes also work with sweeteners such as stevia and monk fruit, rounding out the intensity of these alternative sweetness to make low-sugar sauces, dressings, and drinks taste balanced. Meanwhile, sorbitol also helps hold onto moisture, which prevents products such as baked goods from having a dry texture, even when they have less sugar.

Here’s the approximate breakdown of sugars in 100g of Prune Juice Concentrate:

21.58g glucose
14.40g fructose
15.88g sorbitol
0g sucrose

Sugar reduction sometimes can allow for sodium reduction as well. In barbecue sauce, for example having less total sugars allows less salt to counter the sweetness. You can experiment with salt levels by holding back half of the salt initially and then adjusting the salt as desired later.

For sugar, this is what we’ve found:

While each product has different taste, texture, and appearance requirements, use these guidelines to get started:
  • To lower total sugars in a recipe, replace 30% corn syrup, sugar, or brown rice syrup with equal parts Prune Juice Concentrate or Dried Plum Puree and water.
  • Reduce cane sugar by 10-15% and add 5% Prune Juice Concentrate or Dried Plum Puree
  • When using Sunsweet Ingredients for fat reduction (for brownies, cakes, or cookies), you may also be able to reduce sugar by 10-15% because prunes will naturally make the recipe sweeter.