Caramelizing Sugar

The idea here is to take table sugar and to caramelize it without turning it into a liquid. You want the flavor of caramel, while retaining the utility of table sugar. You can use it in cakes, pies, sauces, etc.

To begin, put 4lbs of normal white sugar in a glass dish, and bake it at 300 degrees for 4-6 hours. Stir every 30 minutes.

30 minutes in

2 hours in

3 hours in

4 hours in

Cool for at least an hour, while stirring every 15 minutes. Then sift, to remove clumps, and store just like you would regular white sugar.

The person who originally came up with this idea is Stella Parks, a celebrated and published baker who runs a cool, user friendly website.

Edit - someone in the comments brought up a good point. No, this is NOT brown sugar. I mean, it is vaguely brown in color, but it is not the brown sugar they call for in recipes. Brown sugar still has molasses in it. This results in it being more acidic, and therefore you cannot swap it for white sugar in recipes. What I made is a caramelized sugar, so it has a different flavor from both brown sugar and white sugar, and it can fully replace white sugar in recipes.