How Tuesday - Making Herbed Sugar

Sugar conserving or flavored sugars are created when leaves of herbs are layered or blended into sugar to make a sweet or savory ingredient for cooking and seasoning.  They have a flavor shelf life of about 3 to 4 months once herbs are infused, but never spoil.

Making an herb flavored sugar is one of the easiest things to do with your herb harvest and it is sooo tasty.  It makes a great gift and a perfect ingredient in sugar cookies or other baked goods.

I use herb sugar to create Lavender brownies, Rose Geranium cookies, and to flavor my herbal tea.

Placed in decorative jars you can put Herbed Sugar in gift baskets with baking mixes, teas or other gifts. Or combine several flavors to craft a tower of flavor for a friend and include recipes for the use of your creations.   No matter how you use herbed sugar, it is a wonderful way to preserve the flavor of fresh herbs well into the winter months.  And that can be worth more than gold when the snow is deep and the wind is howling!

How to make Herbed Sugar

You can use Turbano raw sugar, brown sugar, coconut sugar, or traditional refined white sugar.

Turbinado sugar differs from more common sugars because it comes from the first pressing of sugar cane and therefore retains more of the plant’s flavor and natural molasses. The syrup that’s released from this pressing is boiled to form crystals, which are then spun to separate them from any remaining liquid. These crystals are coarser, darker, and more well-rounded in flavor than granulated or brown sugar because they’re less processed. This slightly rich, molasses flavor is what makes this option so appealing and has many people reaching for turbinado over granulated sugar.

Brown sugar is a sucrose sugar product with a distinctive brown color due to the presence of molasses. It is either an unrefined or partially refined soft sugar consisting of sugar crystals with some residual molasses content (natural brown sugar), or it is produced by the addition of molasses to refined white sugar (commercial brown sugar).

Coconut Sugar is a sugar created from cocoanut palms.  It has a stronger coconut flavor but is very similar and can be used interchangeably with processed white sugar.

Refined sugar is a term used for sugar extracted from plants.  Sugar is the generic name for sweet-tasting, soluble carbohydrates, many of which are used in food. The various types of sugar are derived from different sources. Simple sugars are called monosaccharides and include glucose (also known as dextrose), fructose, and galactose. "Table sugar" or "granulated sugar" refers to sucrose, a disaccharide of glucose and fructose. Sugars are found in the tissues of most plants, but sucrose is especially concentrated in sugarcane and sugar beet, making them ideal for efficient commercial extraction to make refined sugar.

Sugar conserving or Sugar Flavoring 

I actually prefer to use refined sugar to make a flavored sugar because it has been so refined that the original molasses flavors are gone and it becomes a blank canvas for infusing the flavor of herbs.  It is perfect for this project.

Herbs to use to flavor sugar

Mint

scented geranium

lavender 

fragrant basils 

are good candidates for sugar conserving. 

Steps to make Herbed Sugar

Method number 1

Pour 1/2 inch of sugar into a clean glass or nonreactive container. 

Place leaves across the surface. 

Cover completely with a 1/4- to 1/2-inch layer of sugar. Add another layer of herbs, then another layer of sugar. 

Repeat until all the leaves are covered (or the container is full). 

Make sure the top layer of sugar completely covers herbs. Seal the container. 

Store in a cool spot in your house in about 2 weeks, remove the now dry herb leaves from  he sugar.  Sift out any small broken plant bits and repackage for storage or gift giving.

Method Number 2

This method is quick and easy and gets you a product you can use instantly.  

For this you need a blender or food processor.  

Add 1 large handful of herb leaves to the blender or food processor.  (I use a coffee mill.)

Pulse until the herbs are well chopped (giving you a Tablespoon of chopped herbs.) 

Add 1 cup sugar and pulse until well blended.

The herbs will color the sugar which will be very fine in structure, like caster sugar, giving it a nice look, but there will be bits of herb in the sugar making it less useful for flavoring tea or coffee, but perfect for baking.

How Tuesday - Making Lavender Infused Brownies

My recent edible flowers program talked about using lavender in both savory and sweet edible dishes.  One of the most popular flavored items was Lavender Infused Brownies.  The flavor of the lavender is infused into these in two different ways.  You can make them in a pan, but I recommend making them in mini muffin cups so you can share them or freeze them for later.

How to Make Lavender Infused Brownies

Step 1 - you can use an herbal sugar one of two ways.  Blend 1/3 cup lavender and 3 cups sugar in a blender and pulse until the lavender is pulverized and has imparted its scent to the sugar (about 2 to 3 minutes.)  You can also make the sugar in advance by layering granulates sugar with 1/4 cup lavender buds in alternating layers with about 2 cups of sugar and allow to infuse the scent and flavor gradually over a week to two weeks.  Sift out the lavender and used the infused sugar to create this recipe.

Step 2 - gather your ingredients.

1 1/3 cups all-purpose flour 

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp sea salt

1 cup unsalted butter (2 sticks)

3 tsp lavender flowers (dried)

1 cup cocoa powder

2 cups herbal or regular sugar (lavender sugar is amazing in this!)

4 eggs

1 1/2 tsp vanilla

Optional 1 cup chopped nuts 

Step 3 -- Pre-heat oven to 350 F.  Either line bottom and sides of 9x12 baking pan with parchment or line mini muffin tins with papers. 

Step 4 -- Combine the flour, baking powder and salt in a small bowl and set aside.

Step 5 -- Melt the butter in a small pot over very low heat. When melted, add the lavender flowers. Stir gently to cover all flowers. On very low heat, allow the flowers to impart their flavor into the butter.

 

After about 8 minutes, remove the pot from the heat. Strain the butter into a medium sized bowl, removing the lavender. 

Step 6 -- Stir in the cocoa. 

Step 7 -- Blend in the sugar, eggs and vanilla.

Step 8 -- Add the dry ingredients (and nuts if you decide to use.) 

Step 9 -- Blend all together and spoon into the mini muffin tins (or the 9 x 12 pan)  

To make it easier to fill mini muffin tins, I recommend putting the batter inside a 1 quart zip lock bag and snipping off the corner and piping the batter into the cups.  Fill about 2/3 full as brownies do not puff like cupcakes.

Fill about 2/3 full as brownies do not puff like cupcakes.

Step 10 -- Bake in the oven for 20 minutes for the small bites (or 30-35 for larger pan.) 

Makes about 45 mini muffins. Keep in a lidded container for about 7 to 10 days.  They freeze well of you drop them into a zip seal bag.  Each mini is abut two bites and the perfect little treat.  The explosion of lavender scent and flavor as you bite into them is a wonder!

6 Unique Ways to Preserve an Herb Harvest

There are many ways to preserve the herbs from your harvest.  Here are a few quick and easy ones to get you started.

Freeze leaves in water

Quick and easy, you just grab an ice tray fill the square halfway with water and add the herb leaves.  You can leave the leaf whole or chopped them fine.  Pop them into the freezer.  Once the cubes are frozen fill the tray the rest of the way with water and freeze again.  This two-step method makes sure the leaves stay covered by the water and ice so they keep their green color.

Once finally frozen you can pop put the cubes and place them in a zip lock bag for long term storage.  This will give you herbs for casseroles, soups, stews and long cook dishes all winter.  Discard the cubes once the spring harvesting begins.

Make a Bouquet Garni Bundle 

Bouquet garni is a bundle of herbs (thyme, bay, parsley, rosemary, savory) used in long cook soups and stews.  It is great in the crock pot where you can hang the bundle from the side and let the flavor infuse the dish, then remove the bundle when cooking is over.  You do not have to worry about leaves in the dish or picking out bay leaf.

You can use a bouquet garni fresh, or you can make fresh bundles and hang them to dry.  Once dry, you can wrap a cello bag around them and give them as a gift along with a soup recipe, or save their wonderful goodness all for yourself.

I have previously posted recipes to use with bouquet garni too!

Dry in a paper bag

Savory, Thyme and rosemary are all great candidates for bag drying.  The leaves have a small size and very little moisture, so you toss the cut stems in a bag, hang it on the wall and let the herbs dry.  Sometimes depending on humidity, I will give the bags a shake every few days. No other special treatment is needed and the herbs will be try enough to be stripped from the stems for storage in about a week.

Honey or Vinegar Infusion

Make an infusion of herbs transferring the flavor into another medium.  You can create a vinegar or honey.  See these posts for detailed instructions.

How Tuesday on making vinegar

Recipes using Herbed Vinegar

Make a compound butter

A compound butter is any plain unsalted butter to which you add herbs. You can create a single herb flavor or blend the herbs tighter to create a variety of flavors.  The general rule is 1/8 to 1/4 cup herbs into 1 stick unsalted butter.

Here is one of my favorite versions:

1 tsp parsley, finely chopped

1 tsp thyme leaves

1 tsp chopped chives or garlic chives

1 tsp tarragon

Blend the herbs into 1 stick of room temperature unsalted butter with a fork to get the herbs evenly distributed.  Then roll the soft butter into a sausage in plastic wrap and place in the refrigerator to eat in a week or in the freezer for up to 3 months.  You can use the butter on fresh steamed vegetables, steaks, baked or roasted potatoes, rice, egg noodles are on your morning toast of muffins.

I have more recipes for making compound butter (also called Herb Butter) all over the blog, but here is one of my first. 

Make a salt

There are several ways to make herb salt.  My two favorites are just to layer the whole herb leaf in salt and allow the salt to absorb the flavor from the leaf then later remove the leaf and you have white salt infused with flavor.  Another way is to run the salt and herbs in a coffee grinder.  I start with a larger salt so that I get a fine salt with fine flakes of herbs in it. 

You can also make an herb salt with chopped fresh leaves that you stir into salt, then spread on a baking sheet and allow to dry in the open air for 2 to 3 days to a week depending on humidity.  This is a great way to infuse the salt with a mixture of herbs, like a blend of chives, thyme, parsley and sage.  You use about 1 teaspoon of chopped fresh herbs to ¼ cup of salt (I like kosher.)  Once the herbs and salt have dried, you can place the mixture in a jar where it will keep its herbal taste for at least a year.

We will be posting more ways to make herbed salt and flavored sugar later this fall.

Rose Geranium Cookies

The most popular recipe in the cooking demo program this week was cookies made with rose geranium leaves and sugar flavored with rose geranium. We will show how to make herbal sugar very soon with holiday gift ideas.

1/2 cup butter
1 cup sugar (or rose geranium sugar)
1 egg
1/2 cup milk
1 tsp rose water
2 tsp rose geranium leaves, finely chopped
1 3/4 cups flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
4 doz. small rose geranium leaves

Cream and sugar together until light and fluffy. Beat in egg,milk, and rose water.  Soft together dry ingredients ad add them together with the chopped leaves to the creamed mixture, stirring until well mixed.  The dough will be not be dry but also not liquid. Drop by heaping teaspoons onto lightly greased cookies sheets. Because of the liquid nature leave good 2 inches between cookies.  Press a single Rose geranium leaf deep into each cookie.  Bake in 350 degrees and bake for 8 to 10 minutes.  Serve with a gentle companion tea with light lemon or floral flavors.