Monthly Archives: August 2019

DIY Confectioners’ Sugar

Confectioners' Sugar

Cookie with Confectioners’ Sugar

Recently I made a treat that used confectioners’ sugar in the frosting. Confectioners’ sugar, also called powdered sugar or icing sugar, is granulated sugar that has been ground into a fine powder. It can be sprinkled over a baked good, but it also readily dissolves in liquid making it easy to stir into icings and frostings. Just be sure not to confuse it with superfine sugar or bakers’ sugar; they are ground finer than granulated sugar but not as fine as confectioners’ sugar.

So, I have taught you exactly what confectioners’ sugar is. Now I am here to offer you a method for making your own, in case you are preparing frosting while a cake cools and find that you have run out of powdered sugar. (No, of course, this has never happened to me. Or, at least, not this week.)

The Spruce Eats gives us their advice: “All you will need is a blender, measuring cup, a clean dish towel, (and) sugar. … For each cup of confectioner’s (sic) sugar needed use one cup of regular granulated sugar. … Put the granulated sugar into the blender and secure the lid. Place the dishtowel over the top of the blender to catch any powder “smoke.” Blend using the pulse method until the sugar turns to powder. This method works best in small quantities, 1 to 2 cups at a time.

If you are making even a smaller amount, alternatively you can use a coffee grinder, spice grinder, or mini-food processor. Just be mindful that the sugar crystals can scratch plastic, so consider carefully before making the powdered sugar in a plastic blender or processor.” I have a dry cup for my Vitamix which works beautifully for making powdered sugar.

Store bought confectioners’ sugar will have additives, such as cornstarch. You can opt to make your own confectioners’ sugar just in emergency situations, or you can prepare it yourself to ensure that your sugar has no additives.

Cardamom Peach Morning Muffins

cardamom peach morning muffins

cardamom peach morning muffins

It’s peach season, and I got so excited I got twenty pounds of peaches. Now I am (desperately) trying to find a zillion ways to use them up. After grilled peaches, bellinis, and eaten raw, peach muffins came to mind. I thought that the peach flavor would be the star in a muffin that was not too sweet, so I looked up my Hearty Raspberry Muffins. Also, I consulted a peach recipe in my archives to help get a good balance. A tweak here, an addition there, and I had a tasty muffin. If you like a sweeter treat, then drizzle them with a simple sugar glaze made of one part non-dairy milk to three parts organic powdered sugar. Add a pinch or two of cinnamon and cardamom powders to your glaze to spice things up.

To make the recipe vegan, I merely removed the eggs. Muffins can generally get by with enough baking powder. To help combat the dryness at altitude, I added more liquid to my batter. To bump up the peach flavor, some of that liquid was the juice that ran off when I diced my peaches. If you don’t get enough peach juice, then add more milk. The last adjustment was to use up my cardamom simple syrup I had made for another recipe. You can substitute another liquid sweetener, but be sure to add cardamom to your batter.

Cardamom Peach Morning Muffins adapted loosely from Spiced Peach Muffins

1.75 cups all purpose flour
1/4 cup whole bran
1/4 tsp fine sea salt
1.25 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1/3 cup cardamom simple syrup, or other liquid sweetener
2.5 TBS canola oil
1/4 cup peach juice
1/2 cup non-dairy milk
1 cup peaches, diced but not peeled

Preheat oven to 375F and grease 10 sections of a muffin tin. Whisk together the flour, bran, salt, baking powder, and cinnamon in a large bowl. In a medium bowl, whisk together the simple syrup, oil, peach juice, and milk. Stir the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients. Gently fold in the peaches.

Heap the batter into the muffin tin; the cups will be 3/4 full. Bake the muffins for 18 to 20 minutes, or until they’re golden and risen high. Cool muffins on a wire rack. Store, well-wrapped, on the counter for 3 days; or freeze for up to 3 months.

Until next time, happy baking!

Cookies and Cream Vegan Ice Cream

Cookies and Cream Ice Cream

Cookies and Cream Vegan Ice Cream

Many of the recipes attempted for this week’s inspiration came out disastrous. My goal was to prepare an ice cream base for a myriad of creations during the hot summertime. The flavor needed to be tasty enough on its own, with a texture that mimicked a quality dairy ice cream. I wanted creamy, not too sweet, and not icy, and I was willing to do anything to achieve vegan perfection. Some frozen treats that I made started out in a dairy version that I then tweaked, while some were complicated vegan recipes. None of them turned out great. That was until I watched a video on ice cream making and adapted the techniques I learned to enhance my vegan recipe.

The base I chose consisted of nuts, so I didn’t need to make it vegan. The changes I made were influenced by a mashup of many ice cream recipes that I looked at for reference. I used cashew milk for the liquid to add creaminess. To further encourage a smooth texture, I stuck with a liquid sweetener instead of a granulated one. The final tweak was to add sandwich cookies to the base to create the specific flavor profile.

Cookies and Cream Vegan Ice Cream

1 cup raw, unsalted cashews
1.5 cups cashew milk (or use coconut milk)
1 TBS vanilla extract
1/4 cup agave syrup
pinch of sea salt
12 vegan chocolate sandwich cream cookies, crushed

Put the cashews in a bowl and cover with water. Soak at least 4 hours, or overnight in the fridge. Drain the soaked cashews. Put drained cashews, cashew milk, vanilla, agave, and salt in a blender. Blend ingredients until mixture is smooth and thick. Prepare in an ice cream maker according to manufacturer’s directions. Add the cookies in at the end, according to your machine. Makes 1.5 pints.

Until next time, happy non-baking!