What is sparkling sugar

Pearls come in a variety of colors and have a pearlescent sheen. The most common ones looking like, well, pearls. This is one of my favorite decorative sugars. Remember those? Nonpareils are smaller than sugar pearls and not pearlescent. I always just thought these were called sprinkles. Jimmies are thin, cylinder shaped sugars. Great for topping ice cream and for making confetti cut-out cookies. Stars, teddy bears, holly leaves, hearts, snowflakes—those are just a few of the sugar sequins living on my sprinkle shelf.

Yes, I have a shelf in my kitchen dedicated to decorative sugars. Interchangeable is sanding sugar, which is a finer grind than sparkling sugar. Both add a sparkle flavor and color to cookies and other baked goods and desserts; and the crystals, much larger than table sugar, do not dissolve when subjected to heat. Some people also refer to it as decorating sugar or pearl sugar; but as you can see in our Sugar Glossary, those are slightly different. What do we do with it? We add a pinch of holiday garnish.

Sparkling sugar is available in enough colors for any occasion. We buy ours at KingArthurFlour. If you have other holiday suggestions, let us know!

Please follow and like us: Permalink. But baking the sugar a tiny bit really adds some sparkle to the sugar and only takes a few minutes more. We highly recommend completing the drying process in the oven. Here is a Two Sisters Crafting tip …. After only 4 minutes in a degree oven we had the melted mess that you see here in the bottom picture. Not very pretty and the smell of burnt sugar is so terrible. Do this instead. Create a small trough with a piece of aluminum foil and place it on a cookie sheet.

Pour the colored sugar in a mound in the aluminum foil trough. Place the cookie sheet in a degree oven. Set the timer for 4 minutes. Check the sugar. Check again. We ended up baking this sugar for 8 minutes. Here is the cooled sparkling sugar. You will need to run it through a sieve before using it. Here is what we sifted out of our finished blue Sparkling Sugar, little tiny pieces of food coloring and melted specks of sugar.