citrus sugar tutorial {sunshine and spring}

I couldn't believe all the comments on our friend Jennifer's Vanilla Sugar recipe post! It was so fun to read all the stories of people who have lived or do live in Germany. So when I heard Jennifer was making lemon and orange flavored sugars, I told her we needed a tutorial for that, too, please! And she delivered. Yum!

Citrus Sugar Tutorial

My family loves the vanilla sugar that I made a few weeks ago. My daughter uses it on fresh strawberries and says that they taste like strawberries and whipped cream. I liked it so much that I was anxious to try some other flavored sugars. The idea came to me while I was making orange curd. My recipe called for me to mix the zest of an orange into sugar, mashing them together well. The orange smelled so heavenly that I added a little more sugar and worked the orange zest and sugar together until the sugar was completely integrated with the orange. I spread the mixture on a cookie sheet and put it in the oven on low to dry out. Yum, it tasted really good, but the sugar had big crystals that clumped together.

The second time I made it I used the zest of 1 lemon and about 2 cups of sugar. I put the rind and the sugar into my blender and started to mix it. I could tell right away that the zest wasn’t going to mix well with the sugar, so I dumped it into a bowl and mixed it together with a rubber spatula. It smelled so heavenly while I was making it, it smelled like sunshine and spring. Once I got it mixed together well, I spread it on a cookie sheet and let it set out to dry. My clumped together sugar crystals were much smaller and the yellow lemon rind looked beautiful in the sugar. It also tasted wonderful. I’ve used this on fresh fruit and my morning oatmeal It’s really tempting just to sprinkle this in my hand and lick it. It really is that good.

Recipe:

Zest one lemon.

Mix the zest with 2 cups of granulated sugar. Mix with the back of a spoon or rubber spatula until the zest is completely integrated with the sugar.

Spread on a cookie sheet and let dry.

Break up any large crystals with the back of a spoon. Store in a sprinkle container with medium sized holes. You can sprinkle it on anything that you would normally sprinkle sugar on.

What do you put your flavored sugars on?