Flavored Sugars

I saw this recipe for flavored sugars in Cooking Light and had to try it. The possibilities are endless:  rim of glasses for cocktails, stirred into oatmeal, on top of quick breads or muffins, on toast instead of cinnamon sugar, yogurt and did I say rim of glasses for cocktails?

They do not recommend using a mini food processor.  They recommend using a spice or coffee grinder.  I have a coffee grinder but I only use it for coffee. Once the coffee oil gets in there, anything else you use the grinder for tastes like coffee.  So did I want to buy another grinder just for spices and nuts and then have to store it too? NO! So I thought I would try a little experiment.  I decided to start with strawberry first.

I used the mini prep to get it as fine as a I could and then...

put it in the mortar & pestle to finish it off.

It worked wonderfully. Mix with sugar and there you go!

I had thought I would do a couple of different flavors. The only thing is you have to wait in between batches. Once you finish grinding up the one flavor, you have to rinse it out.  It really does not dry well enough with just a quick towel dry. The fruit really becomes a powder. It will stick to any tiny amount of moisture. So you have to wait for it to finish air drying well before you do a new batch. Or if you are inpatient like me, you can get out the blow dryer.

So then I moved onto blueberry and tropical (banana, strawberry, pineapple mix). I wanted to try lime because they show you how to dry the lime peel out in the microwave. I can totally envision cocktails with a lime rim but the store didn't have organic limes.  I usually try to eat organic and in this case I especially wanted to get organic since you would be actually eating the part that would be sprayed with nasty chemicals. Well I will have to wait for the lime. But in the meantime, did I mention you could put these on the rim of glass for cocktails?