There is many options like:
Agave nectar, maple syrup, honey, applesauce, pureed raisins, pureed dates, pureed bananas, erythritol, coconut sugar, brown rice syrup, rapadura, molasses, sucanut, stevia, muscavado, turbinado, damara, xylitol, saccharin, splenda, and cane sugar.
Each one of these options comes with its own set of issues that you will have to take into consideration when baking. You cannot just add, subtract or substitute an ingredient in a recipe for the hell of it. BAKING IS A SCIENCE!!!! It is not said that baking is a science to make baking "more special".......it is truth!!!
In the culinary cooking one can add, subtract and substitute fairly easy without making too much of a mess and find the balance in a dish. Baking YOU CANNOT.
The reason why I am capitalizing those words is for you to understand the VITAL importance of ingredients in a recipe and why we do the things we do in the recipe to make the baked recipe work. SUGAR is MANDATORY in baking......period. So stop baking if you do not wish to make something proper or be resigned to hard to eat items.
Sugar and butter are not BAD for you in small amounts and moderate supply. Butter is in fact the only way we can get our K2 vitamin that our body NEEDS in order to assimilate vitamin D from the sun and Omega 3's from fish. You cannot properly do so without. Honey is one of the oldest forms of sugar used in baking and is very healthy and delicious for you. Raw, unpasteurized honey from a local apiary (beekeeper) is full of nutrients from your local environment. Painting ingredients as a black and white or all or nothing mentality has NEVER served us or our bodies well. BTW, agave nectar is actually not good for you because of the mass amounts of processing that goes into it......just so you know if you are trying to be "healthy".
So when a recipe calls for 1 cup of sugar........put 1 cup of sugar, or 3/4 cup of honey, or 3/4 cup of agave nectar, or 1 cup of coconut sugar, or.......well you get the picture.
Not trying to be harsh.....just being clear /img/vbsmilies/smilies/wink.gif