Cooking Sugar

Cooking sugar to make caramel or buttercream can be intimidating. Don’t do it long enough and you won’t get the right flavor. Do it too long and the sugar will burn. Don’t do it quite right and the whole pot may crystallize. Eek!

Let’s start at the beginning. When cooking sugar, be sure it is completely moistened with water before putting it on the stove.

Make sure no undissolved sugar crystals are clinging to the sides of the pot. (Sometimes when you moisten the sugar, a bit of it splashes onto the side of the pan.) Lingering sugar crystals can mess with your sugar when it is cooking, and start a chain reaction within your syrup that will crystallize the whole pot. It is easy to prevent: simply brush down the sides of the pot with a pastry brush dipped in water. Once the sugar is on the stove, bring it to a boil over high heat. I have found that if you cook sugar syrup on medium or low heat, it has a greater chance of crystallizing, so I always cook it on the highest heat possible. Once the syrup is boiling, don’t jostle the pot and definitely don’t stir it. Either action could trigger crystallization.