DIY Brown Sugar

Ever find yourself in the middle of a recipe, suddenly realizing that you're missing an ingredient? Sometimes that means your out of luck, and you better get yourself off to the grocery store, but sometimes there's a way around it. Since the one time I ran out of brown sugar mid-recipe and used this substitute, I haven't looked back. It's been homemade brown sugar all the way, from that point on, because making your brown sugar is really that easy. And really, it just doesn't seem worth it to pay for brown sugar when you can make it yourself in a couple of minutes with two basic ingredients: granulated sugar and molasses. The result will be rich, soft, ready-to use brown sugar just like you buy in the store (but better!)

DIY Brown Sugar

If you're still buying brown sugar at the grocery store, stop! It takes two ingredients and a few minutes to make you're own fresh, lovely golden brown sugar.

• Yield: 6 ½ cups brown sugar, loose 1x

Ingredients

Scale 1x2x3x

• 4 cups granulated sugar
• ⅜ cup unsulphured molasses (6 tablespoons)

Instructions

1. Add molasses to sugar in the bowl of a stand mixer*. Beat together until molasses is evenly dispersed through the sugar, making it the color of brown sugar**.
2. Store in an airtight plastic bag with all of the air pushed out before sealing.

Notes

*You can also use a bowl and fork and mix the brown sugar by hand, but you'll want to do a smaller quantity at once.

**It might be my imagination, but my homemade brown sugar seems to look a little orange from the molasses when I first make it; then the colors seems to become normal after a few hours.

***In case you're trying to do the math, the ratio of sugar to molasses here is 1 cup of sugar to 1 ½ tablespoons molasses. If you want your brown sugar to be darker, just add a bit more molasses.