Homemade Brown Sugar

While making the gingerbread house on the weekend I ran out of two things - brown sugar and molasses.

For the brown sugar I used the simple technic of adding molasses to white sugar and rubbing it in until it's completely blended.

You go from this ...

to this ...

For the molasses I used my book "The Food Substitutions Bible" by David Joachim.  This is a great resource to have on hand.  It's basically an A to Z listing of most food items that you use in your kitchen and possible substitutions.  I had almost enough molasses (remember I doubled my recipe so I needed 2 cups of molasses - I was 1/4 cup short).  By using this book I found out I could use honey - which we had plenty of - to top off my 2 cups.  Phew - disaster averted.