Chewy caramels and caramel sauce, we love. Cleaning the sticky pot shellacked with sugar residue after making those caramels, we love not so much. Here's a trick that will save you some time and save your poor arms a lot of scrubbing! More

Have you ever had a batch of ice cream that stays soft and slushy no matter how long you leave it in the freezer? Or the other extreme, an ice cream that freezes so hard that you can hardly dig your spoon in for a taste? Sugar just might be the culprit behind both situations! More

When we first picked up this book by lawyer turned cake baker extraordinaire, Warren Brown, the title read like a cookbook for dummies. But once we opened its beautifully designed pages, it had us hook line and sinker. Like any good book should, this one had us camped out on the couch reading it page by page and cover to cover.

The book is packed with recipes, along with tips, tricks and a few science lessons behind his methods. It takes a straight forward and less intimidating approach to making the three types of basic cakes: pound, butter and foam with chapters on frostings, glazes, fillings and assembly... More

Chelsea is wondering how to store her brown sugar. She writes:

I just saw the question about storing flour, and it made me think my brown sugar always gets hard before I can use it all. How do you store brown sugar?

The New York Times' article yesterday about the showdown between non-sugar sweeteners got us intrigued. We haven't talked much about artificial sweeteners and sugar substitutes here on The Kitchn, so we thought we'd do a survey and see where you stand. Do you regularly use sugar alternatives like Splenda and Equal? Do you lean more natural, substituting rice syrup and agave in your baking? Or do you stick with the white crystals themselves?

What cookies did you leave for Santa back when you were young and a believer? In my childhood home, it was Red and Green Christmas Balls (one red, one green) and a cup of cocoa left on the fireplace hearth. I no longer leave out cookies on Christmas Eve but my Mum still sends me a box of Red and Green Christmas Balls every year.

Last time I was home at holiday time, she pulled out her yellow pyrex mixing bowl and whipped up a batch. I was assigned my childhood task: rolling the balls of dough into the red and green colored sugar and carefully placing them on the cookie sheet. These memories and traditions are a precious gift, as sweet and shining as Santa's cookies...and much longer lasting!

Read on for the recipe and leave a comment on your Santa treat! More

We all go through a lot of sugar this time of year, and those tiny grains seem to be underfoot all the time in our kitchen. So we are in an especially good place to appreciate this perfect sugar packaging from France. More

This time of year, we often come across recipes that call for sugars we don't normally use or remember to keep stocked, like superfine or confectioner sugars. What to do if you find yourself short? The good folks from Cook's Illustrated have a few ideas... More

As the star ingredient in cookies, cakes, and other holiday baking, molasses really gets its heyday this time of year! But not all kinds can be used interchangeably, particularly blackstrap molasses... More

When first learning to work with sugar back in culinary school, we were taught to only use a clean metal spoon to prevent crystallization while the sugar was melting. This and the vision of our chef punctuating each word with a wave of said spoon will be forever lodged in our memories. But in our research these past few weeks, we came across a different opinion... More