Belgian Dessert*
PEARL SUGAR
INGREDIENTS
3 cups sugar
3½ tablespoons water
Takes 40 minutes. Make 3½ cups.
* = Belgian pearl sugar is larger than the Swedish variety and resembles pearly white pebbles. It’s sugar, if you can find it, has large granules made from sugarbeets. The Belgian variety is best for Liege, or Belgian, waffles. Swedish pearl sugar, pärlsocker, has smaller sugar granules. Use Swedish pearl sugar to top pastries, cakes, and breads.
PREPARATION
Add both ingredients to 2 large pans. Mix with wooden spoon or spatula. Use low heat. Stir constantly until clumps start to form. (If too much loose sugar remains, add 1 more teaspoon sugar and stir again.) Try for larger clumps if you want Belgian pearl sugar and smaller clumps if you’re going for Swedish pearl sugar.
When happy with clump sizes, dry them out over low heat for 20 minutes. Stir occasionally. Remove from heat and let cool until clumps harden.
TIDBITS
1) Swedish pearl sugar granules are small. Belgian pearl sugar granules are big. But are they the world’s biggest? No. Sugarologists say Tahitian granules are 23-to-25 percent than those from Belgium.
2) Culinary historians says the largest pearl sugar granule came from Greenland during the Viking Age. Please Bengt Erickson’s The Sugar Cane Fields of Greenland’s East Settlement, (Sockerrörsfälten i Grnlands Östra Bosättning.)
3) Erickson raised cane from 1012 to 1025. His success encouraged hundreds of other Swedish Vikings to voyage over and do the same. Unfortunately, so many came to harvest sugar that they completely chopped down all the trees in Greenland’s vast forest just to build their log cabins.
4) What, you you’ve never heard of the Great Greenlandic Forest? You say that aren’t any trees there? Sure, now.
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