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| Yes, you can MYO "white", brown, and powdered sugar! |
I am really excited about the recipes I'm going to share with you today! Why because we need them! In todays world it is very hard to come by truly healthful food. I own and love the book called Nourishing Traditions, by Sally Fallon. If you've never heard of it you can have a look
here.
In her book Sally talks about sugar and sweeteners. She talks about their effect on our bodies and reccomends we stick to natural sweeteners in their natural form, used in small amounts. While I haven't exactly mastered the "small amounts" part. I do use natural sweeteners and not processed. For example we use raw honey, raw agave nectar, fruit pulp (home made), and dried fruits. Now for cane sugar, she recommends ONLY using Sucanat or Demerara. Well they both taste fine, but taste isn't always enough. Sucanat is atrociously expensive, and Demerara is too coarse for use in a lot of baking. (I mix it in with the liquid ingredients to dissolve it, for bread and cakes) IE the chocolate chip cookies I was dying for the other night. So like they say, necessity is the mother of invention right. Well, I NEEDED those cookies, but didn't want to resort to white sugar and well demerara doesn't go over well in cookies, they're overly crunchy because of the large crystals which don't dissolve. So I made my own "white" sugar, and then used that sugar and molasses to make some brown sugar too! The cookies turned out great and satisfied the need without loading my body up on white sugar. (Brown sugar is simply white sugar mixed with molasses. Even when you buy it from the store.) So, I know you're all drooling to know how to Make Your Own "white" and brown sugar.
Here you go...
For the "white" sugar:
you need a blender and some demerara sugar. That's it! Take your blender and put about 2 cups of the demerara sugar in. It will hold more than that, but won't grind it well so don't try. (I did try this in my flour mill once, and it hurt the finish on the burrs, not a good idea, stick to the blender)
Now you're going to put the lid on and hit the "grind" setting, which was on the high side, above the middle button for my blender. Only grind for a few seconds. Stop and stir well.
Then grind again. Do this a few times until the granules look smaller and similar to white sugar. The sugar will turn to powder if you're not careful, so take it slow.
Stop and stir, stop and stir until it's relatively uniform. Now Pour it in your sugar canister and make some more until your sugar canister is full of "healthy white sugar". Make sure you tap your pitcher well to get all the fine sugar off the blade and out of the bottom or it will stop up the blender. It only took me about 5 minutes to fill mine.
For "white" powdered sugar:
Use the same process as above, only grinding it longer to a fine powder. Now some recipes for "confectioners" sugar say to add corn starch to it. If you want to that's fine, it won't hurt anyting, but I usually don't bother with it. So that's it, fill your powdered sugar jar with this and next time you want to make frosting you can do it with healthy (er) sugar.
Now for the brown sugar:
All brown sugar, even from the store, is made of white sugar with molasses mixed into it. So take your new "white" sugar and place it in a mixer, I used my kitchenaid, and add a little molasses to it. Let it mix well with the paddle until it's all uniformly brown and there are no more little balls of molasses. The biggest thing I need to point out is that this is a time for patience! I start out with the mixer on 2 then turn it up to 4 ONLY AFTER the sugar and the molasses are blended. Otherwise you will have a mess. Then just let it work the molasses into the sugar and stand back and marvel at yourself! You just saved a ton of money and a trip to the health food store! My approximate measurements were about 5 cups of MY "white" sugar to about 1/4 cup molasses, for a medium brown sugar.
If you'd like to see the actual process of brown sugar,
here is a great tutorial my dear friend Jamie made.
*But note that her ratios are different,* because she is using true white sugar. We are not. Our sugar already has some molasses in it naturally so we'll have to add less molasses and more sugar to make it light. Notice that she offers ratios for golden, light and dark brown sugar. You can do the same with yours. Just adjust the amount of molasses. More molasses makes a darker brown sugar and less makes a lighter brown sugar.
27"She looketh well to the ways of her household, and eateth not the bread of idleness." Proverbs 31:27 KJV
I pray this recipe and tutorial has been a blessing to you! Now go Make Your Own "white", brown and powdered sugar for all your healthy, natural baking needs!
Blessings!
