Flavored sugars are incredibly easy to make and can be used as an ingredient in desserts and beverages, served to the side of coffee and tea, used to rim cocktail glasses, or sprinkled over the top of completed desserts just before serving. All you need is some sugar (we recommend superfine sugar) a coffee or spice grinder, and your flavoring ingredient.

We’ve included several recipes below, but you could use almost any dry grindable ingredient (whole spices, dried herbs, citrus zest, chilies, other sweeteners like maple sugar, etc).

Start with one tablespoon of sugar, and some of your flavor ingredient, and increase one or the other as needed to get the balance you want (blending before each taste). You can even try blending flavors! The finished sugar will have a consistency somewhat similar to powdered sugar.

Flavored Sugar Recipes We Like:

INGREDIENTS

• Lavender Sugar:
• Grind ½ tsp Dried Lavender Buds along with 4 tbsp of sugar.

• Chile Sugar:
• Remove the stems and seeds from half of a Dried Aji Panca Chile. Grind it with 2 tbsp of sugar.

Variations: Try any other dried mild chilies, tweaking the amount of sugar as necessary.

• Cardamom Sugar:
• Crack and empty enough whole cardamom pods to gather ¼ tsp of seeds. Grind them with 3 tbsp of sugar.

• Lime Sugar:
• Zest of 1 Lime
• 2 tbsp Sugar

Variations: Substitute zest from a different citrus fruit, such as lemon, orange, or Buddha hand. Use this technique with leftover hard candied citrus zest, just skip to step 7 in the Lime Sugar directions and use
less sugar.

• Ground Vanilla Sugar:
• 2 Vanilla Beans (Bourbon Vanilla Beans or Tahitian Vanilla Beans)
• 2 tbsp Sugar

• Candy-Cap Sugar:
• 1/4th of a cup of dried candy cap mushrooms
• 1 tbsp Sugar

• Hibiscus Sugar:
• 2 tbsp crushed Dried Hibiscus Blossoms
• 2 tbsp Granulated Sugar