Flavoring ingredients with herbs makes your herbs go even further. Herbal butters, oils and vinegars infuse your cooking with flavors from the herb garden. Herbal sugar can do the same for drinks and baked goods like cookies, cakes and biscuits.
Difficulty: Easy
Time Required: 30 Minutes to Make, 2 Weeks to Infuse
Here's How:
- Select 3-4 sprigs of fresh herbs. Good choices for infusing sugar include: lavender, mint, rosemary, sage or thyme.
- Gently bruise the leaves by crushing with a mortar and pestle or the back of a spoon. You don’t want a paste, but you do want to release the oil. So when you can smell the herbs more fully, you can stop bruising.
- Measure 2 cups of sugar.
- Add the sugar to the crushed herbs, a little at a time, stirring the herbs throughout the sugar.
- Place the sugar mixture in an air tight jar and allow to stand for 2 days in a cool, dry place.
- Open and stir the sugar every 2 - 3 days, to evenly distribute the herbal essence. The herbs still have moisture in them and stirring the sugar will keep it from clumping.
- The sugar should be ready after about 2 weeks of storing and stirring. The sugar will have absorbed some of the herbs oils and the herbs themselves will have begun to dry.
- Use the sugar, herb flecks and all, to season homemade goodies, iced tea and lemonade or when making homemade jellies.
Tips:
- Batch may be doubled, but any larger and it's hard to blend well.
- Store out of direct sunlight.
- Sugar is good as long as the herbal smell is still aromatic and true.
- Herbal sugars make wonderful gifts.
What You Need:
- 3-4 sprigs of fresh herbs
- 2 Cups of Sugar
- Mortar and pestle or Large spoon and bowl
- Air Tight Jar or Container
