Somehow (magic?) my professional life is really scarily organized and planned and detailed. But most of the rest of the time, my modus operandi is:
Why plan? Just improvise! It will probably be good enough. It may even be better than if you had planned.
I like to tell Nick that this is called being spontaneous, but we both know the truth. It's just too much work for me to get my brain in the right mindset to plan ahead (translation: I'm lazy).
Some (ok, most) times, my attempts are colossal failures. But then I hit the jackpot and my "spontaneity" is validated. A shining example happened whilst making the candy I described in my last post.
The facts:
It was 4:57pm and I was halfway through a recipe for candy hearts that needed to be made for Nora's Valentine's Day party the following morning. No dinner cooking (was dinner even planned? nope.). Three hungry kids who were sneaking tastes of aforementioned candy in process. I walked over and opened the container holding our powdered sugar, only to realize that instead of the 2lbs of powdered sugar required, there was a scant 3/4 lb staring sassily up at me. What to do?
Option 1: Panic, abandon the project, leaving child in distressed puddle of tears on the floor & me with the inevitable task of creating valentines at 11pm.
Option 2: Call a friend and hope they are home and have 1.25 pounds of powdered sugar just sitting around. If they do, bundle up three hungry, sticky kids and shlep them over to gather the powdered sugar.
Option 3: Google "homemade powdered sugar" and hope.
I took my chances on Option 3.
Woot!
Given our time constraint, and since you need to make the sugar 1 cup at a time (in my little blending container), I opted to make a half recipe of candy.
Totally awesome. Totally easy.
HOMEMADE POWDERED SUGAR
Time to completion: 1 minute
Cost: Hmm...5 cents?
Equipment:
High quality blender - we have the NutriBullet (I am assuming a food processor would work just as well...maybe a regular blender too???)
Granulated sugar (1 cup regular sugar makes about 1 cup powdered sugar)
Corn or tapioca starch (optional - I think it helps to keep the sugar from getting stuck together...)
Directions:
1. Measure out your desired amount of granulated sugar into the blender (I read that you shouldn't do large quantities at a time or the sugar will get too hot while being chopped and clump together...maybe that's why they add starch?).
2. If using, add in starch. I used 2 tsp to 1 cup of sugar. Worked great.
3. Turn on the blender and watch the magic happen. It took a minute.
you know i would have had an extra bag of powdered sugar for you. we need to be neighbors.
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