Anyone who has spend any serious time in the kitchen one time or another will realize they are out of a key ingredient. In my case recently that was brown sugar, although I figured that out while at the store luckily. Been even more luckily I remembered that I really didn’t need any. Thinking back to an old Good Eats episode, I knew I had cane sugar on hand as well as molasses. A food processor and then you have all you need to make your very own homemade brown sugar.
Two simple ingredients, that means you need to select wisely. First off I want flavor so black strap molasses it is. Black strap also contains some vitamins and minerals not found in your everyday refined sugar. The second ingredient is the sugar itself. In our house we use Zulka Morena Pure Cane Sugar. This sugar is non-GMO and is not refined, which is why it has a golden color.
The difficult in using this sugar is that it’s coarse. I wanted to really intergrate the molasses, so before I added it to the food processor I let it run for 30 seconds with just the sugar in it to make the crystals more fine.
As you can see from the above picture that is much better. Now add the molasses and mixed until fully incorporated. It should take about one minute. Make sure to scrap the sides of the bowl if a lot is sticking. Place into an air tight container until ready to use.
You can print out the recipe below or go to Food Network’s site to see Alton’s instructions.
Alton Brown's Homemade Brown Sugar
Ingredients
- 1 pound pure cane sugar
- 3 ounces by weight Blackstrap molasses (less and not Blackstrap if you want a lighter sugar)
Instructions
-
If you have a coarse sugar, pour it into food processor and run for 30 seconds to make the sugar fine.
-
Add the molasses. Process for 1 minutes. Stop and scrap the sides if a lot is getting stuck to them,
I used this brown sugar when I made my wife a peach pie for her birthday. It was the best peach pie I ever made! It’s also really yummy on a bowl of cereal with some blueberries on top.