Vanilla icing sugar is widely used in a lot of European baking recipes. It is a very common and a staple baking ingredient. It is added to batters and dough, to whipped cream, sprinkled on top of fresh strawberries, used to dust the cakes, biscuits and other sweets treats. Could not be simpler to make at home, regular icing sugar gets infused with vanilla seeds from a vanilla bean.

On the continent, it is easily available in just about every supermarket, and is so popular that supermarkets sell their own brand of vanilla sugar. This commercially produced vanilla sugar uses vanillin, (primary substance of natural vanilla extract or bean, which is cheaper) rather than vanilla beans (vanilla bean seeds). However, here in the UK, where I currently live, this type of sugar is a bit of a struggle to find, you can almost exclusively buy it in continental food stores or speciality stores.

Vanilla extract, paste, and vanilla beans, in most cases, easily replace vanilla sugar when making custard or when baking cakes or biscuits, but there is one recipe that vanilla icing sugar simply cannot be replaced, and that is for the Austrian Vanilla Crescent Biscuits.

When making these biscuits you can easily add vanilla extract or vanilla paste or seeds from vanilla pod to the biscuit dough, but once the biscuits are baked, they need to be coated in vanilla icing sugar that simply cannot be replaced or substituted by anything else.

Preparing your own vanilla icing sugar offers a very practical solution if you cannot get hold of vanilla sugar, but also makes a lovely homemade gift for your foodie friends and family. It is very quick and easy to make, and you know exactly what goes in it.

Ingredients

400g icing sugar
2 vanilla pods

Method

Put icing sugar in a food processor (small food chopper or blender, coffee bean or spice grinder will work too). If you do not have any of the above, a bowl and a whisk will do just fine. Food processor helps to break up vanilla seeds that can stick together and clump up a bit.

Cut the vanilla pod in half lengthwise but try not to cut all the way through. Scrape the seeds out of the pod with a knife, keep and reserve the empty pods for later use.

Add the seeds to the sugar .

Pulse and mix, (or whisk if using a bowl and a whisk).

Put the sugar into an airtight container or divide between the glass jars with airtight lids (size and shape of your choice).

Cut the rest of the vanilla pod in pieces and add them to the sugar, this will add more flavour.

You can use the sugar immediately or leave overnight. For optimal flavour leave about two weeks for the sugar to fully absorb the vanilla flour.

Store the vanilla sugar at room temperature in a dry and cool place and give a jar a little shake now and again as the sugar can possibly clump together a bit.

Use for anything you want to add vanilla flavour and particularly indicated for coating Vanilla Crescents Biscuits.

I am a big fan of using fresh herbs in cooking but sometimes having a long shelf-life alternative is quite handy for adding flavour and aroma to the dishes.

Herbs are in abundance in spring and summer and this is the time to use them for making herb salt.Use the herbs from your herb garden, windowsill pot or simply buy the herbs at your greengrocer, market or supermarket. If buying the herbs you do not have to worry about their seasonality as they are available in stores all year round.

Herb salt is great to use for example on roasted potatoes, as a herb rub for meat, chicken, stake. Add to vegetables before roasting, put in soups, casseroles and many more. You can use it to season cooked food, maybe sprinkle it on chips or French fries, grilled cheese or grilled polenta, grilled vegetables, or just use it in place of regular salt.

Really easy to prepare and stored in pretty glass jars make a great little home made gift for Christmas or birthdays, thank you gift for your foodie friends and family, and it will be a fantastic addition to their collection of kitchen spices. Add a nice festive ribbon and a tag and you are ready to go. I love to store the herbs salt in quite small glass jars and used them in Christmas stockings.

For this recipe you will need a selection of fresh and dried herbs. Maybe you will want to avoid herbs with high water content like fresh basil, fresh parsley or fresh coriander, fresh dill and similar.

It is a great idea to customize your herb salts creating different blends and maybe even adding dried garlic, dried onions and other dried spices for example. The combinations are endless and you can vary the ratio of fresh herbs to sea salt depending on your own preference.

In this recipe, I use a mixture of herbs but you can make a single herb salt, using maybe just sage or rosemary for example.

Ingredients

100g in total of you preferred selection of herbs (I used 100g in total, more or less equal weight of fresh sage, fresh rosemary, fresh marjoram, fresh thyme and dried oregano)
200g coarse sea salt
100g fine sea salt (can use pink Himalayan salt, flake, fleur de sel, etc.)

These quantities will give you about 400g of herb salt.

Method

Start by selecting you favourite herbs and make sure they are really fresh; it is the very fresh herbs that contain high levels of essentials oils.

Wash the herbs (only if they are particularly dusty or have been sprayed) with cold water, dry thoroughly with kitchen paper or cotton kitchen towel (sandwich the herbs between the paper towel) and gently pat dry.

Remove the stalks, coarse stems and any discoloured leaves and damaged areas. Leave to dry for at least 1h.

Roughly chop the herbs and put them in the food processor/ spice grinder or a blender. Add coarse sea salt and pulse several times, then process until you obtain the consistency of the herbs roughly equivalent to the size of the coarse salt. You can use pestle and mortar or simply cutting board and a sharp knife.

Stir and mix the herb mixture, add fine sea salt and pulse again and process until you obtain the consistency of sandy texture. You can stop pulsing and processing action sooner if you are not too keen on powdery consistency.

Now the salt herb mixture needs to be dried.

Spread the herb mixture on a lined baking tray, baking sheet or baking dish in a shallow layer and leave to dry in an airy and warm place for about 3 hours at least or overnight (up to 24 hours) and give it a stir now and again. Once the salt is fully dry, break up any clumps with a fork or back of a spoon.

Place the salt herb mixture in a clean, dry stoppered jars (glass jar with a tight fitting lid) and store in a cool, dry place.

Salt has always been used as a great natural preserver so you herb salt should last you for at least a year providing you really dried the herbs thoroughly. After this time the intensity of the flavour will gradually start to diminish and the green colour will darken further as herbs continue to dry, however it is still perfectly fine to use.

Homemade Vanilla Icing Sugar Recipe

Ingredients

Method

Herb Salt recipe

Ingredients

Method