Quick and Simple Brown Sugar

You MIGHT be thinking, "What? Brown Sugar? I thought she was sharing paleo recipes!"

While I HAVE shared paleo recipes (and will continue to do so :), my family's food intake is not solely paleo. I started trying some paleo meals thanks to a friend opening my eyes, but before paleo my family's food lifestyle consisted of "Real Food": eating non-processed foods in which every ingredient was known. Now, if you are familiar with "Real Food" then you are probably STILL wondering about Quick and Simple Brown Sugar (sugar is a processed "food"). 

The answer is simple: I'm only human. I'm NOT perfect. And you know what, I DO enjoy consuming sugar from time to time; just not straight sugar. Our family chooses cane sugar and truly limits just how much we put into our bodies; plus in using cane sugar we can further reduce how much goes into a recipe. We definitely slide from time to time, but it TAKES time to train and teach your body it doesn't NEED processed sugars. At least it takes time when you're husband is in the Army (and gone for days at a time training, deploying, field time, whathaveyou), when you have five little monkeys to take care of (ages 5 and under; one of them is a dog), house work to do, and bills to pay. And if you have discovered the secret to maintaining ALL this and never cheating on your healthy lifestyle, you need to LET ME IN ON THE SECRET! :)

I've looked at the ingredient list on brown sugar packages. And really I've ONLY looked at the packages of brown sugar I'd buy. And the ingredients say the same thing: brown sugar. And then of course there are the varieties: Extra Dark, Dark, Light.. I'm sure there are probably more. I have ALWAYS used light brown sugar. For ANY recipe that called for brown sugar. Then I found out one day that brown sugar is simply molasses mixed in with white sugar. Wait, seriously?!

Of course I had to look it up and sure enough, I found I could make my own. I just needed to buy some molasses. Now, molasses isn't exactly cheap if you're looking for happy, earth friendly molasses, but I could MAKE my own brown sugar, so I picked it up. Now, before you get TOO excited, molasses tastes NASTY (in my opinion), so despite the fact that the molasses adds the extra UMPH to your sugar, resist the urge to lick your fingers. Please. Blegh.


Quick and Simple Brown Sugar
(this particular batch was made on 22 Jan 13)

What you need:

3 cups sugar (non-brown sugar, obviously)
1 Tbsp molasses
3 bowls/containers (one of which needs to be an airtight container for storage of sugar)


And that is ALL the ingredients! Now, the recipe I looked up uses one cup of sugar. I've messed with the recipe a few times over now and three cups of white sugar works best for our family. And it goes PERFECTLY with oatmeal, in cookie recipes, etc. I have never had a "Man, I wish I had only used a cup of white sugar when making this here brown sugar" moment. And somehow that should be COMPLETELY reassuring to you.

I'm sure I've mentioned it before, but in case I haven't, I'll state it again.

"I am weird about my food."

First you put in your three cups of sugar and your tablespoon of molasses into a bowl. Then take a fork (or the tablespoon) and start mixing your ingredients together. And just as Joy the Baker says, you really will think you are doing this ALL wrong and that I was COMPLETELY errant in my recipe.

I PROMISE, this is what it is suppose to look like. Just keep mixing the molasses into the sugar. Eventually, it will end up looking something along the lines of this:

You can see that there are still little clumps of molasses and sugar. And this is were my "food weirdness" kicks in. I pull out the second bowl and in batches of up to 1/2 cup start smoothing out clumps and further (and completing) mixing the molasses into the sugar.

My little bit of transferred sugar to the second bowl.

Using a spoon to smooth out the molasses bits.

After I COMPLETELY smooth out the 1/2 cup sugar or so, I transfer it yet again to its final resting place. 

BEAUTIFUL brown sugar.

Side view. NO clumps.

An air tight container will ensure your sugar does not dry out. I have kept one batch for up to a month and NEVER had a single hard rock clump form. I'm sure I could have kept it longer, but I ended up using up the sugar. Now, I do NOT use brown sugar every day. In fact, we usually use it to top our oatmeal and steel cut oats or for dessert items (cookies, scones, etc.) so three cups lasts our family for WEEKS if not up to month (possibly longer) before having to mix up a second batch. If you find yourself running low, you can whip up some more and add it to what you already have on hand.


And now you know how!