The lack of artificial anything is usually one of the things I like most about life in Greece. But around the holidays I miss the technicolor sparkle. Cookies cut into shapes and strewn with bright sugars may not be the most sophisticated holiday offering, but they are our favorite. We used to put some dough aside for the girls to knead and roll until it was a gray mass of filth and delight all the bright green sugar in the world couldn't hide.
Our stock reduced to only bright yellow and baby blue, I looked on the internet to see how ridiculously easy it is to make your own sugars. All we needed were simple food colorings now available at the supermarket, plain white sugar, and coarse demerara sugar.
1.Round up a few jars with tight fitting lids
2. Start with about about a 1/4 of a cup of sugar, and add a drop or to of the color you want, and shake madly. If you are using paste colors, you may need to mash them in with a spoon.
3. The colored sugar will be like damp sand- spread it out in a dish. It will crisp up and stick to the dish after about a half an hour. Loosen it with your fingers and break up the lumps and put it in a jar.
That's the basics. But we came up with fabulous colors! The golden color of the demarara sugar makes for muted, sophisticated shades.
"Green" became Moss- That was 5 drops of green in 1/2 C demerara. For true green, to 1/2 C demarara add 5 drops green and one of blue to counteract the natural gold of the sugar.
"Red" became a deep Salmon- 4 drops red in 1/2 C demarara. Adding 1 drop of blue made not a true red but a chic bordeaux.
For a deep Aqua do the reverse- 4 blue and a green.
The pure white granulated sugars produce clear jewel tones- candy cotton pink, blue like a tiffany's box (again, with a whisper of green)
For sanding sugars with some depth, we blended shades, mixing the finer crystals with the coarser.
Sprinkle them right onto the cookies before they go into the oven, or onto white icing while it is still just sticky enough for the sugar to cling to it (too damp, and the colors will bleed).
A half hour of play and a couple of Euros have never had a more sparkling result.
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