Try this easy homemade brown sugar recipe whether you’ve run out of brown sugar and need to improvise in a pinch or you just want to save money!
Homemade Brown Sugar Recipe
Try this easy homemade brown sugar recipe whether you’ve run out of brown sugar and need to improvise in a pinch or you just want to save money!
A lot of people don’t know that you can make your own Homemade Brown Sugar. This homemade brown sugar recipe is super simple to make and you can make it with ingredients you already have on hand, saving you the money you don’t have to spend running to the grocery store and buying all those other things you think you need while you’re there!
You can make a big batch of homemade brown sugar and use it in oatmeal, topping for coffee cakes, and of course cinnamon rolls. If you would like to store the homemade brown sugar, just put it in a plastic bag or jar and seal. The airtight container is the trick to keeping it from getting hard. If it gets hard just put a piece of bread in with it and it will soften up. The moisture from the bread will transfer to your brown sugar and make it soft again.
Here are some other tips for making the brown sugar soft:
- Put it in the microwave for a few seconds and that will soften it too.
- pulse it in the food processor
- wrap a wet paper towel around brown sugar and let it sit for several hours
- place an apple in with the brown sugar
- place a clean piece of terracotta in with the brown sugar (these sell for a lot in the store so just get your own.)
Homemade Brown Sugar
1 cup granulated sugar
1 Tbsp. molasses
Mix well with mixer. When everything is blended, store in an airtight container.
There are different strengths of molasses so you can ever so slightly adjust the amount of molasses if you want darker or lighter brown sugar. My recipe calls for what I call “regular” molasses. To make dark homemade brown sugar just add another tablespoon of molasses.
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Who knew. Think this will work in my praline recipe?
Does this need to be refrigerated? I don’t keep sugar or molasses there now so I’m thinking not.
This should work like regular brown sugar although candy can be touchy especially if it is the kind you cook. You don’t need to put it in the fridge. Just store it like you would regular brown sugar in an air tight container in the pantry.
If you look up the definition of brown sugar it is just white sugar with a certain amount of molasses added to it. Darker brown sugar just has more molasses added to it so you can adjust the amount for how dark you want you sugar too. I say this to explain that this recipe is just the same as regular brown sugar.
Great tip!
I cut my sugar, can I have haqlf regular sugar and half sugar sub with Malasses? I’d like to try this. I have used brown sugar mixed with sugar substiture and that is fine. My husband never knew the difference!
I am going to try this at home and see how much brown sugar 1 cup of granulated sugar plus the molasses equals. Might it take a bit more sugar and molasses mixed together to equal 1 cup packed brown sugar? Then when making something like cookies could you not just
mix the sugar and molasses first in the bowl and never have to actually bother making a batch of brown sugar?
You know Pat I am not sure. You would think you could do that. Maybe one of our readers has the answer.
I have had no problems with cookies or baked beans when I added the sugar and molasses separately. The molasses flavor in the cookies comes out so much better with the fresh brown sugar than the bagged stuff.
Almost all cooking is a PHYSICAL change, such as mixing up items in a stew. Sometimes you process it in the blender to make a very smooth potato soup, but it is still a physical change. During physical change cooking for example, you can add extra garlic at the end to make something taste better. When making mere physical changes, be brave. Add extra brother, garlic or leave some out. Add a squirt of ketchup, mustard or mayonnaise. It
Only occasionally does cooking create a CHEMICAL change. This normally occurs when you use leavening such as to make a cake or souffle. Normally you can’t add more of an ingredient at the end and make it better, and you must include the exact amount of flour, sugar and leavening. Don’t be brave when making chemical changes until you are an experienced baker.
If I were following Pat’s logic, I would determine the number of tablespoons of sugar in a cup and reduce the amount of sugar and molasses proportionately so I would up with only one cup of sugar and then mix the two. Then I would cream the butter in. Then add the eggs. Then the dry ingredients. It it looks a little wet (because of the liquid of the molasses) I would add more flour. (Don’t worry about your cookies not being sweet enough. They are normally plenty sweet.) If not your cookies may spread in the oven and be very flat, and perhaps crispy like Florentines that are frequently wound around a spoon to create a tube. But you may like them that way. If you are happy with these kind of cookies, repeat exactly what you did. If not add more flour.
I stopped buying brown sugar when I saw this in a list of substitutions. I do 2 tbl spoons molasses to 1 cup of sugar. for me, it’s one less baking staple to buy. I really like the flavor of molasses and you can add a little more to taste. it works great!
For those of you who have forgotten or didn’t know, we have a whole chapter in Dining on a Dime on substitutions. It has many of the regular ones you have seen but also many ones you have never heard of before. It also has a section in that same chapter on equivalents and details on high altitude cooking.
This is such a good tip. I sometimes need brown sugar for a recipe and have molasses and white sugar but run out of brown sugar, so this helps a lot. Nice for chocolate chip cookies.
I can’t believe how good this homemade brown sugar tasted. I’ve got my grandson eating oatmeal with me for breakfast, but didn’t like the taste of the Splenda Brown Sugar mix my husband uses. So I made a batch of your special recipe and made him new oatmeal and it was a hit. Thanks again for sharing the knowledge with all of us. And by the way, I tried the 3 ingredient pork chop recipe, and this will be a staple on the dinner table too. Thank you Jill and Tawra.
Didn’t think about using it in oatmeal Carol – duhhhh. Will have to try it.
I shared your recipe for brown sugar on Twitter (to 4000+ Followers ) so that should help spread the word.
I always knew that brown sugar had molasses in it, but never knew the proportions for the recipe. Thanks!
Very rarely do I buy my brown sugar ready made, but I do make sure to keep a bottle of molasses in the pantry. I think I first learned how to make brown sugar using molasses and white sugar from the More-with-Less cookbook by Doris Janzen Longacre in the early 1980’s. It is nice to have the knowledge of things like this passed along to keep it alive.
love the video
I love posts like this. We need to start making our own pantry staples from scratch. It is less expensive, it’s easy to do, and we know what is going into our food.