Homemade Sugar Cubes

There is something fun about sugar in cube/lump/morsel form. They also provide a convenient unit for sweetening tea and other drinks. But commercial sugar cubes are  expensive. This drove me to plumb the depths of the internets (a quick google search) to find an alchemic method of conjuring sugar cubes at home.

The incantation recipe which looked most promising came from Marcia Simmons at this food blog (to be clear, I have no affiliation with this blogger or blog, but I like to cite my sources).

Ingredients:

1. 1/4 C granulated sugar
2. 1/2 tsp water

Proceedure:

• Mix 1/2 teaspoon water into 1/4 cup sugar (should be a moist dough, see figure 1)
• Press into shape using hands or molds (see figures 2-5)
• Allow to dry overnight (8ish hours)

I made several batches of the above ingredient ration (probably about 1.5 cups sugar). I tried four different ways of shaping my trial 1 sugar cubes:

1. half teaspoon (figure 2)
2. hand (figure 3)
3. filling a loaf pan and then dividing into cubes (figure 4)
4. ice cube tray (figure 5)

Figure 1.

Figure 2.

 Figure 3.

 Figure 4.

 Figure 5. I don't own any normal ice cube trays, so I used my Titanic and iceberg tray

Results and Observations:

Results

The sugar cubes shaped with the half teaspoon and by hand hardened perfectly. I am very excited to achieve such success. 

The sugar cubes in the loaf pan also hardened, but a few crumbled during extraction. Sadly, the sugar cube Titanic and iceberg crumbled completely. This is thought to result from the mold slowing the rate the sugar cubes dry. Further testing with longer drying times is needed to sink a sugar Titanic into my cuppa.