Guide to Using Decorative Sugars and Sprinkles (2024)

FAQs

How do you use decorative sugar? ›

Put decorative sugar in a small bowl (one bowl per color). Shape dough into balls per recipe directions. Roll in the sugar, place on cookie sheet, and bake as directed. If cookies need to be flattened before baking, use the bottom of a drinking glass, a fork, or your thumb.

Pour Sprinkles or Sugars inside cutter and spread evenly over cookie. Press lightly. Gently lift cutter away. Bake according to recipe directions.

Sprinkles should be put in the cookie dough prior to baking. If you would like sprinkles on top of your sugar cookies too, then press them on with your finger tips before baking. This will ensure the sprinkles stick to the sugar cookies.

A.: Colored sugar, sprinkles and other similar cookie decorations have an indefinite shelf life, as they are made of pure sugar for the most part. Sugar does not support bacterial growth, so it rarely goes bad.

What Are The Different Kinds Of Sprinkles? There are LOTS of different types of sprinkles, but today, we're highlighting some of the most common: jimmies, quins, nonpareils, dragées, sugar pearls, sanding sugar, coarse/sparkling sugar, and edible glitter.

Sprinkles are very small pieces of confectionery used as an often colourful decoration or to add texture to desserts such as brownies, cupcakes, doughnuts or ice cream. The tiny candies are produced in a variety of colors and are generally used as a topping or a decorative element.

The easiest thing to do is to brush the tops of the cookies with a little bit of water or milk, using just enough to dampen the cookie dough and no more. This will help the sprinkles stick and won't change the finished appearance of the cookie when you're done baking.

Sprinkle colors does bleed into cake frosting. Once you add them to your cake, cupcakes, or cookies, it will be fine. However, as it sits, the sprinkles will start to bleed.

You can use decorator's sugar and pearl sugar as a substitute for sanding sugar when decorating things like muffins, cookies, cakes, and scones. You can also use other coarse sugars in its place as well if you only want the texture, and don't care about the color.

Sanding sugar (left) is a much finer grain, while sparkling sugar (right) is much larger. Both sugars are quite sparkly, so don't let the word sanding make you think sanding sugar is dull.

Can sugar decorations go in fridge? ›

Can I refrigerate the Sugar flowers? The sugar flowers can be refrigerated, however we suggest to reduce the amount of time the flowers are in the fridge as much as possible. The moisture and condensation of common high traffic refrigerators will slowly break down the sugar flowers.

No, fondant does not need to be refrigerated. In fact, it should avoid any contact with your refrigerator. Leftover fondant should be stored in an airtight container at room temperature. If you plan on covering a cake with fondant, make sure you don't use any fillings that need to be refrigerated.

If they taste sweet and haven't taken on a sour or stale undertone, you're in the clear — no matter the use-by date. If the taste has changed you should throw them away, but don't fret about taking that taste! It's almost impossible to get sick from expired sprinkles.

It should also be noted that sprinkles added to the outside of baked goods have a tendency to bleed into whatever they're added to. It is best not to decorate cupcakes or cakes any earlier than 12 hours in advance of serving them.

For a standard box of cake mix, or any recipe that makes a two- or three-layer cake, combine 1/2 cup sprinkles with 1 Tbsp. flour. (The flour will coat the sprinkles so that the sprinkles float in your batter, rather than sink to the bottom.)

Sprinkles 101: Jimmies

They come in multi-colors or chocolate and are usually what people refer to when they say "sprinkles". Jimmies aren't just for decoration either. They can also be used in and baked in recipes because their color bleeds minimally compared to other sprinkle options.

An early version of sprinkles, nonpareils (tiny confectionery balls made with sugar and starch) “were used in the late 18th century to decorate confectionary centrepieces called 'pièces montées, as well as desserts.” Many say the nonpareil was invented by confectioner Rudolf Hoinkis in Germany.

Jimmies. These are the little rod-shaped sprinkles that you probably see most often, typically in rainbow colors or plain chocolate, and they are the best for baking.

Sprinkles are made from corn syrup, sugar, cornstarch, wax, and artificial flavors and colors. This mixture is shaped into long, noodle-like strands, broken into small pieces, and sprayed with food coloring and a sugar glaze.

Put FANCY SPRINKLES Rainbow Crunchy Jimmies on everything from ice cream, to buttered toast, cupcakes, inside cake batter or on top. These can be baked onto cookies at a lower temp setting.

How many sprinkles do you need to decorate a cake? ›

Full Sprinkle Covered

Once you go above a 10 inch round cake, you'll need at least 3 bags of sprinkles or a 1 pound bulk bag of sprinkles from our shop for a more cost effective option. You can always find something to do with leftover sprinkles!

The ideal thickness to roll out your sugar cookie dough is about 1/4"--that way, they'll be tough enough to be handled and decorated, but thin enough to stay a little crunchy.

Different types of sugars affect the texture because they absorb different amounts of water. Remember moisture is the key! White sugar creates crispier cookies and brown sugar creates chewier cookies. Chilling your cookie dough before baking prevents the cookie from spreading and creating cookie disasters like below.

Add a Little Shine (or a Little Crunch!) One of my simplest sugar cookie tricks is to brush the surface of the cookie with a little egg wash.

If you wanted to use it on baked cookies, either sprinkle it on freshly frosted cookies or brush cooled cookies with an egg white-wash before applying so the sugar will stay put.

The trick to adding sprinkles to the side of the cake is to scrape on extra frosting or clear piping gel making sure the cake is of course nice and firm from chilling. This gives you a fresh layer of frosting or gel for the sprinkles to completely stick to.

You might also be able to control the color transfer by modifying your icing recipe to include less moisture, or allowing a period of time for the surface of the icing to dry before applying your sprinkles. You could easily experiment with this the next time you make a batch of cookies.

Decorate cookies, cupcakes, and cakes with icing or frosting first, and then sprinkle with sanding sugar. To add sparkle to muffins and scones, sprinkle the sanding sugar over the tops just before baking. The sugar will stick to the dough, but won't melt during baking, so the baked goods emerge warm and sparkling.

Icing sugar is simply another name for powdered sugar or confectioners' sugar. While it is a less common name here in the U.S., it makes sense since icing, powdered or confectioners' sugar is so perfect for making icings, frostings and fillings, such as the filling in my Homemade Oatmeal Cream Pie recipe. What is this?

Decorating or Coarse Sugar

This type of sugar has crystals that are much larger in size than white granulated sugar, which makes it stronger and more heat resistant. If you can't tell by the name, this type of sugar is used primarily for decorating candy and desserts, and it can be found in a wide variety of colors.

What can table sugar be used for? ›

Although the main reason for the use of sugar is its sweet taste, sugar has many other functions in food technology. The most important among these are that added sugar in foods acts as a sweetener, preservative, texture modifier, fermentation substrate, flavouring and colouring agent, bulking agent.

Use 10x finely ground powdered sugar for the silkiest smoothest buttercream. On the package of powdered sugar it often says how finely ground it is. 10x is the finest, and what you want to use in any type of frosting.

Powdered sugar (or confectioner's sugar) can last indefinitely if stored in an airtight container in a cool, dry place away from heat and any strong smells. If your powdered sugar shows signs of moisture like moist clumps, contains pests or evidence of contamination, be safe and throw it out.

Sweet Snow is used in place of icing sugar for dusting cakes. Unlike icing sugar, it does not dissolve away so that cakes that are kept in the fridge, frozen or wrapped will keep the freshly dusted look.

Coarse Sugar

Sometimes called decorating sugar or pearl sugar, coarse sugar is a type of white sugar that's much larger than granulated sugar, which makes it more resistant to heat. It's sometimes used interchangeably with sanding sugar, but the two aren't the same.

Jimmies are tiny sugar strands of confectionery, typically in a rod shape, used to decorate desserts. They come in multi-colors or chocolate and are usually what people refer to when they say "sprinkles". Jimmies aren't just for decoration either.

While table sugar is white, raw sugar is light brown because it is less refined and, as a result, contains more of the natural molasses present in sugar cane. Table sugar that is made from sugar cane undergoes additional refining to remove molasses.

Water. This is an easy one, and handy because you'll generally have some on hand in the kitchen. Water can be a great “glue” for fondant. It dissolves a little of the sugar in the fondant, making it sticky, and therefore, well, makes it stick to stuff.