Well over three, but not yet four, years after this post, I discovered
A) dark and light brown sugars in the store are looking the same shade
B) using jaggery, the best sugar for making masala chai, makes an even more wonderful banana bread than brown sugar. It’s unrefined cane sugar, with the full molasses punch.

I stopped using white sugar in zucchini bread because I enjoyed the brown sugar more.

The jaggery I started with was in lumps, so I ran it through the processor until it looked much like fluffed up darker than dark brown sugar. Some of it caramelized (Maillard reaction heaven) at the outside, and it had that not-quite-bitter note of molasses.

In the recipes where I’ve used honey instead of granulated sugar, it’s been by eye in pouring, and by feel when adding the flour, so I can’t offer quantitative information.

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