Toasted Vanilla Cardamom Coffee Sugar

I never knew homemade coffee sugar was a thing. I was gifted some fancy coffee sugar recently, and even if you don’t put sugar in your coffee, the smell alone is enough to try it a time or two. And while I’m not putting sugar in my coffee everyday, it’s a rare indulgence I can get behind. Problem — it’s expensive.

Homemade coffee sugar is an alternative that is just as good and seriously cheap. It’s also easy to customize however you like. For me, this means vanilla and cardamom. For you, that might mean cinnamon and cocoa. Well, that might also be me too.

If you’ve ever blind baked a pie crust and filled it with pie weights, beans, rice, or some other meaningless thing that does nothing but sit there,  I urge you to try something else — sugar. Just plain old white sugar.

It’s easy — make your crust, put parchment over top, and then just fill it with sugar and bake. When you’re done, you’ll have some toasty, light browned, caramelized sugar. What can you do with this sugar?

Well. You can simply swap it out in a recipe where it would fit — which is pretty much every recipe. Chocolate chip cookies with toasted sugar? Yes, please. Homemade coffee sugar sprinkled over an apple pie before baking? Obviously that’s something that’s happening in the near future.

Or you can flavor it up, like this, with a vanilla bean and some cardamom pods.

If you don’t want to make a pie, you can toast your sugar in a casserole dish, but don’t skip the toasting step.

You don’t have to use this in coffee —use it in tea or hot chocolate, or just use it in baked goods where you think the flavor would work. Or use it on a creme brûlée if you’re feeling super fancy.