Expat Baking Tip #3: Powdered Sugar

Being that it's somebody's 41st birthday and all, I pulled out the three layers of ultra chocolate cake that I secretly baked over the weekend from the freezer and set my sights on making the cream cheese peanut butter frosting to go with it. After having a similar cake that my friend Alanna made for her husband's fairly recent birthday, I vowed I would go the same route. I recall rudely slicing just-one-more slivers until the gracious host had to slap my hand and put the cake at the other end of the table. It was that good.

So I measured out the five cups of powdered sugar, but quickly realized I was two cups shy.

I've recently had success with making brown sugar from scratch so I was eager to try making from scratch powdered sugar, too. After a bit of research, I decided that using a coffee grinder would be the best tool to really get the sugar to a fine ground. And unlike the powdered sugar from the US, I opted to not use cornstarch since I figured that I wasn't storing it for any length of time.

So I measured out 2 cups of regular sugar.

I then got out my trusty grinder (thank you, Shannon!!). After a few seconds of whizzing, I dumped the sugar out and repeated until I had my two cups worth.

Can you tell the difference?

The batch on the left is my powdered sugar from scratch. The right is from a bag that's been opened as sealed well for about 9 months now.

And yet another successful expat substitute. And a good-to-know tip for those of you who just simply run out and can't make it to the store.

Happy baking!