How To Keep Brown Sugar From Caking

Brown sugar can get hard when exposed to air, making information technology difficult to mensurate and to comprise into recipes. As delicious as it is, you lot don't actually want to find a chunk of unincorporated brown carbohydrate in your next cake or cookie! Brown sugar'due south loftier moisture content is what keeps information technology soft and that wet begins to evaporate when exposed to their air, causing the saccharide to harden. The carbohydrate granules in chocolate-brown sugar are coated with molasses – that's what gives information technology its color and season, if you desire to try making your own – and every bit it dries, that coating becomes very sticky, creating the clumps that you merely don't get in white sugar.

Fortunately, there are means to keep brown sugar soft and fresh until you're set to use it.

How to Store Brown Sugar

The best way to shop chocolate-brown sugar is in an airtight container, which volition trap all the moisture in the sugar and keep it soft. I like to transfer mine to a more solid container from the plastic bag that it comes in, as the bags are susceptible to small rips that can permit in air. If you lot don't have a container with an airtight lid bachelor (some containers seem to lose their airtightness over time), identify a slice of plastic wrap on the meridian of the container before pressing the lid into identify.

How to Re-Soften Chocolate-brown Sugar

If your brown carbohydrate is hard, dry or lumpy, you're going to need to resoften it earlier you can utilize it. Fortunately, in that location are a variety of ways to practise this.

Instant Gear up: If you lot demand your certain right abroad, place it in a microwave-rubber basin and identify a moist , only not soaking wet, newspaper towel over it. Microwave for well-nigh xx seconds, then stir. Repeat, if needed, until sugar has softened. Yous'll need to await until the sugar has softened to measure it properly, and then put more in the bowl than yous call up you'll need.
Overnight fix: Put carbohydrate in an closed container and place a slice of fresh bread or ane-two slices of fresh apples on peak. Close the container and allow sit overnight or upwardly to 24 hours. Remove the bread/apples and stir the carbohydrate. Repeat if needed. This method is good if you take a trivial extra fourth dimension and need to soften quite a bit of saccharide.
Long Term Gear up: To forbid carbohydrate from drying out in the long term, buy a terra cotta carbohydrate saver and soak it in water. Dry out off the outside of the disc and identify it in a container with the sugar. Unlike the bread and apple, the disc can be left in with the carbohydrate for months and will go along the carbohydrate soft and usable. You lot will still need to store your sugar in an closed container.