How to Make the Easiest and Cheapest Brown Sugar Ever

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Quit unnecessary spending at the grocery store? One easy way is homemade brown sugar. When I discovered recently just how easy this really is, I felt duped. Has my whole life been a lie?? Seriously, this one is so easy and so affordable.

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woman's hands holding a quart jar of homemade brown sugar

What do I need to make brown sugar?

You need two ingredients:

Both can be found in the baking aisle at your grocery store.

Most kitchens like to have granulated or pure cane sugar in it at all times anyway. So you just need the molasses which is very inexpensive, a little goes a long ways, and it keeps forever. It seems like it to me, anyway.

Maybe the Best By date is printed in dark ink on the jar with a dark liquid inside or maybe it just doesn’t need a Best By date. Not sure but either way, keeping this staple in your pantry means you can have brown sugar anytime your baking recipe calls for it. Like these fantastic chocolate chip cookies my 12 year old makes often!

How to make brown sugar like your grandma used to:

2 cups of sugar (I prefer organic raw cane sugar)

2 tablespoons of molasses

First, add ingredients to a bowl and then use a spoon to incorporate well. If you’d like your brown sugar to be darker, add another tablespoon of molasses. Really work in those lumps. As the molasses incorporates with the sugar crystals, some lumps will form. Use a fork to work them out.

organic cane sugar and a tablespoon of molasses drizzled in a white bowl

That’s it. That’s the how-to. Crazy, right?

photo taken from above of a jar of brown sugar

The Simplicity of Homemade Brown Sugar

plate of dark brown sugar, bowl of light brown sugar with spatula inside, and a jar of Grandma's molasses

When I shared this video, I had more people (my age and much older) commenting and messaging their disbelief at its simplicity. 

Just wait until you find out about powdered sugar! You’ll feel completely as if you’ve lost trust in every single person you know. 

How could something we keep in our pantries take less than 5 minutes to make come bagged and priced reasonably affordable but the underlying message be neatly packaged as “you don’t need to waste your precious time making this. Let us do it for you and you can pay us extra to do this one simple FREE step”? 

How did we get SO far away from simple living and doing it yourself to EVERYTHING is conveniently located at your local grocery store… for a price?? Monetarily AND health-wise.

Let’s agree to stop “gatekeeping”

My mission here with this blog is to teach anyone reading it ways to do things the “old fashioned” way as I am learning them.

In the marvel of modern conveniences masked as ease and simplicity and affordability, we’ve accidentally allowed gatekeepers to hold all the ways our grandmothers and great-grandmothers did every day life. We NEED to share these “tips and tricks” like homemade brown sugar for everyone to know and start using again. 

Here’s how we can help others:

  • 1: repost/share “hacks” and tips you see on the internet that look simple and/or (probably the most important part) have tried and can attest to their working.
  • 2: stop assuming folks know how to do something you deem SO easy and common sense. If the last few years have taught us anything at all, it’s that common sense ain’t so common.

Not ready to quit the grocery store?

Me neither.

Grocery stores are great because I cannot grow my own sugar cane but I sure can add molasses to a bowl and mix with a spoon. 

I’ve found in the last solid year since I decided to start making my own bread, making my own way through my kitchen one homemade recipe at a time, is that my grocery list is smaller.

It’s back to the basics: flour, sugar, oil, salt, cream/milk (oh how I long for a dairy cow!!), maybe a fruit or two I cannot grow yet like bananas.

Meats are coming in a meat delivery system from regenerative farmers who raise pastured animals for meat until I can settle on a local farmer and butcher.

It takes intentional time and effort to do these things so many people won’t do them. But at the end of the day, I can promise you those grocers and brand name product companies do NOT have your health in mind, just padding their pockets. Case and point: the USDA recently okaying lab-grown meats. AKA FAKE MEAT. And, it will not need to be labeled as lab-grown. We’ll just see that “USDA approved” label and think all is well.

And that couldn’t be further from the truth.

Make a goal list of what you want to WORK towards doing or making yourself. It takes time, effort, and intentionality. And it is DOABLE! Here is where we are currently and I can’t wait to cheer for you as you accomplish your own goals too:

Start spreading the news

If you found this helpful, please consider pinning it to your Pinterest, sharing on social media, or sending it to a friend. Sharing our new found (or old) knowledge is how we’ll be able to break free of one more unnecessary chain.

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If you try this recipe, come back and leave a comment or share a picture on Facebook, Instagram, or Pinterest so I can see it! 

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pin for pinterest of how to make brown sugar

Homemade Brown Sugar

In just 5 short minutes with 2 ingredients, you can make yourself a quart of brown sugar ready for any of your baking recipes.
Prep Time 5 minutes
Servings: 2 cups
Course: condiment
Cuisine: American

Ingredients
  

  • 2 cups sugar I prefer organic raw cane sugar
  • 2 tablespoons molasses

Equipment

  • 1 mixing bowl
  • 1 spoon

Method
 

  1. First, add ingredients to a bowl.
  2. Then use a spoon to incorporate well.

Notes

If you’d like your brown sugar to be darker, add another tablespoon of molasses.
 
More recipes at www.johnsonhomenc.com

If you like this…

You may like homemade marshmallows or homemade butter.

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