Infusing sugar is so easy and I can't explain how much I love my Vanilla Sugar. I have tried some of the supermarket varieties and they are were pretty good to be fair but nothing compares to opening a jar of homemade vanilla sugar and letting the sweet scent fill the kitchen.
I use my vanilla sugar in place of normal sugar in cakes, biscuits and cookies, pies and of course in my morning coffee. I honestly don't think I could live with out it now.
I have taken this recipe from How to be a Domestic Goddess by Nigella Lawson but I often just play around with it until I have perfectly flavoured sugar. If you can get hold of extra strong vanilla pods then all the better.
You will need:
750g Caster Sugar
2 Vanilla Pods
1 x Vacuum seal-able glass jar.
Fill a vacuum - salable glass jar with the caster sugar and the vanilla pods, each cut into three; after a week you will have sugar infused with the sort of domestically heady fragrance that seems as if it could only have come from the most well-stocked and well-ordered of Victorian larders.
Since making my vanilla sugar I have become a little infusing crazy and now have both cinnamon and lemon sugar. Same process but using cinnamon sticks and dried lemon peel respectively. Cinnamon sugar I use most at Christmas and is great for cookies, hot chocolate and coffee. My lemon sugar smells phenomenal! I use this mostly for lemon cakes, it tends to clump a bit and requires sifting but its totally worth it.
Nigella also suggests scenting sugars with unsprayed rose petals, dried tangerine peel and rosemary. ◦
1 comment:
I usually buy vanilla sugar, but thanks for the tip! I didn't know it tastes better home-made.
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