Part of the fun of baking is getting to use messy ingredients such as powdered sugar. Like glitter, it magically finds its way into every nook and cranny of your kitchen and all over you. Yet, it's a required ingredient for many sweet treats such as the and the .
Powdered sugar, also known as confectioners' sugar, is commonly used to create deliciously sweet icings and frostings. That sweet glaze on top of and the white clumps of sweetness on crinkle cookies is all made with powdered sugar. It's also the main ingredient in American buttercream, whipped cream and royal icing.
Royal icing is the sweet hardened decor you find on intricately designed sugar cookies at baby showers, birthday parties, and bridal parties. Versatile and sturdy, it's used in the icing that comes with pre-packaged gingerbread houses. Sometimes it's even used to add a delicate blanket of sweetness onto fruit covered pancakes and waffles or a light dusting to perfectly fried funnel cakes.
Recipes usually call for confectioners' sugar when it requires a form of sugar that will easily dissolve and won't produce a grainy texture when combined with other ingredients. If you ever run out of powdered sugar or simply don't have enough, no need to panic. How to make powdered sugar from scratch To make it as smooth as possible, you should use a blender because the blades spin fast enough to consistently pulverize the sugar.
The key to good powdered sugar is its fine texture. You want to avoid chunks because it wil.