Interesting Sweat Food Facts and pointers of the Holiday season 2011-2012
- Trader Joe’s doesn’t use enough corn starch in their confectioners’ sugar – so it gets lumpy. Looks nice and fluffy in the bag but once you go to use it you get a bunch of pebbles that never really go away – your effort to crumble them up will lead to more chunks. So – my learning was that I should just stick with the regular good stuff that your gramma used.
- The difference between regular, dark and light brown sugar is molasses. So, if you are out of brown sugar – and just so happen to have some Molasses on hand – slowly drizzle some Molasses in your sugar. The technical note: Dark Brown Sugar is 6.5 % Molasses and Light is 3.5%. So 1 tbsp. of Molasses for light brown sugar and 2 tbsp. of Molasses for dark brown – add this amount to one cup of sugar
- To make one cup of Superfine Sugar – toss one cup of sugar plus one2 tsp. of sugar into a food processor and grind it up so it is more fine – the yield should be one even cup.
- To make your own Confectioners’ sugar you toss 1 cup of sugar plus 1 tsp. of corn starch into a blender and grind for three min. strain it to remove any chunks – this will produce one cup of confectioners’ sugar
- Did you know that Molasses is a byproduct of the sugar refining process? Yup – they take that dark stuff out and do other unholy things in their sugar laboratory and poof – from a burnt up sugar cain you have molasses and pretty white sugar. Which then are all tossed together again in your mixer to make cookies. I am sure that those unholy practices include using the sugar beet plant to beat up the Keebler gnomes and make middle school children cut their nails just a tad too short so they sting when you grip things for a few days. Don’t feel bad for them – they are middle school kids… they are earned it in some form or fashion.
- Color definitly indicates the depth of flavor of honey. Wholefood market offers an apple honey – it’s all apples and no bee crap. And it tastes like honey – even better. I love the stuff. I mix a crap load of it into goat cheese and spread it on crusty bread – it’s the bomb schmitzers!
- Turbinado and or/ Raw and or Demaerara sugar is the shit. I love the stuff in my coffee and tea and on any sweet thing that you think could benefit from some little light brown crystal diamonds. It takes some time to dissolve so keep that in mind when you decide what to mix it into or sprinkle it onto. It’s actually a by-product residue of making sugar where some of the molasses is left in the sugar. It’s been called Turbinado sugar because the processing includes being steam washed and spun in a turbine.
- Despite the fact that they tell you to weigh out your ingredients, to sift out stuff and to pay mind to only folding things into dough a couple of times (leaving big chunks???) I don’t do most of this stuff and most of my stuff seems to work out fine. Having that been said – I have never baked anything spectacular – as a matter of fact I am only marginally into baking. So, if you find yourself REALLY REALLY into baking you should probably consider following the directions actually and dusting off your weight watchers scale and buy a sifter and use it to weigh and sift things out. Make your own laboratory and find something to sacrifice in the name of the sugar gods and see what kind of great things you can bake. I suggest putting a middle school child in the shower and chucking eggs as them – sacrifice the eggs in the name of the sugar gods. After all most – middle school kids and tweens cold use a good egg beating.
