Mint and vanilla sugars can add a refreshing flavour to homemade cookies, puddings and cakes; grapefruit halves; and are especially nice to sweeten herbal teas. Used as an attractive and very delicious garnish, try rolling lightly dampened individual green grapes in this sugar. Or lightly spritz a cluster of grapes with water, then dust them with the mint sugar, and use this as a decorative garnish on your homemade cheese trays. (For homemade cheese recipes, and more, go to the ‘Recipe’ category of betweenclosefriends.com.) Let dry, and serve with a homemade appetizer Liptauer cheese, Stuffed Nasturtiums, and Boursin Cheeses with Opal-Basil Cheddar Crisps on a decorative platter with an assortment of crackers.
Directions to make a Mint Sugar :
- Put 4 to 6 organic mint leaves and a cup of sugar in the blender.
- Add a few drops of green food coloring, if you wish to have a complimentary mint-coloured sugar.
- Blend the sugar and organic mint leaves together on high speed, until it is well mixed.
- Dry the flavoured sugar overnight by spreading it thinly over a cookie sheet.
- When it is completely dry, store your mint sugar in air-tight jars for later use to decorate and add a refreshing flavour to homemade baking and garnishes.
How to make a Vanilla Sugar
- Place one or two split vanilla beans into a medium sized canister or jar that is filled with sugar.
- Set aside to allow the vanilla flavour to permeate and flavour your sugar, for approximately 2 weeks.
- Stir, or shake occasionally to help blend the flavour.
You will obtain faster results if the vanilla beans are cut into pieces and placed throughout the container; sifting them out when the desired flavour intensity has been reached.
You can use these same techniques successfully using confectioner’s sugar for a much finer and lighter blend. The resulting flavoured confectioner’s sugar will seem to be much sweeter than using regular sugar.
In order to avoid overwhelming recipes for puddings, chocolate sauces, etc, when using these vanilla sugars, ensure that you use a little less than what is called for in your recipe.
The same beans can be successfully reused to flavour many pounds of sugar because of their intense flavouring capacities.
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