OOhh my basil plants are happy with me this year. I think I have found THE perfect spot on the balcony to place them because they have been giving me fresh basil for the past few months like CRAZY! For the people who are following me on twitter, you know what I’m talking about. I was tweeting my harvests almost daily for a while and kept taking your suggestions on what I could do with all that amazing basil. One of my sweet followers had the great idea of suggesting me to do basil salt. I LOVED the concept but I wanted to do different. Often I like to use basil as a fun desert flavor ( don’t do a weird face, wait till you taste my strawberry/basil pie) so I thought, if we can make basil salt, we can for sure make basil sugar!
Using the same process as we would to create basil salt and like I’ve done for my “pesto” powder, I created this recipe for a fresh and flavorful basil sugar that you will be able to use in all sort of delicious ideas; cookies, tarts, pies, cakes, yogurt or just on top of fresh fruits… this aromatic sugar wont disappoint. Try it out, SERIOUSLY!
– INGREDIENTS –
2/3 cup of cane sugar
2 tightly packed cup of freshly chopped basil leaves
1- One day in advance, chop the fresh basil leaves and mix them the sugar in an air tight container. Leave it in fridge for 24h.
2- The next day, line a parchment paper on a baking sheet and open your oven at the lowest setting. Make a thin layer of the basil/sugar mixture on the parchment paper (lot of juices is normal) then put it in the oven to dry for 24h to 48h. Make sure to mix and move the mixture around during the process, break the sugar crystal and spread them out as they dry. Once everything is dried up, pass the whole crystallized basil sugar in a coffee blender to process it to powder.
Use it in cookies, cakes, on top of a freshly cut grapefruit (my new favorite thing) or anything else you can think about.
Be creative!
My boyfriend bought me basil in a pot last week. I was wondering what can I do with this amount of it- I can’t make and eat spaghetti bolonese every day 😉 I’m curious how this basil sugar tastes… hm. I’ll try do it tomorrow 😉 Kisses!
hmmmm 😀 I have tried it today, because I bumped on to your recipe on your blog through google 😀
It is actually quite amazing :), thanks for sharing this!!!
🙂
Oh that’s awesome!
Very glad you enjoyed the basil sugar 🙂 Make sure not to miss my gluten free basil tea cookies coming soon. They are made with this sugar and are totally decadent and still healthy 🙂
Oh well, that sounds good 😀 I am trying to get more healthy right now, because I ate too much crap in the past :D, and I bumped onto your webpage and this is kind inspiring to make nice food which is still healthy… 😀 My mother is french, but her healthy cooking was never that nice 😀