Sugar, Sugar!

This past Saturday, my friend Cassi held her annual Christmas Cookie Club party, where 12 girls swapped cookies packaged up by the dozen. But I'll tell you more about that in tomorrow's post. Tonight, I'm going to show y'all what cookie I made and review the sugar that I used to make it.

I went with the Chewy Spiced Molasses Cookie from Kelly Paloza's The Vegan Cookie Connoisseur. 

This is a soft and chewy cookie with lots of molasses and hints of nutmeg, ginger, allspice, and cloves. It's almost gingerbready, which is perfect for this time of year.

The cookie dough is only sweetened with molasses and brown sugar. But after you ball up the dough into cookie shapes, you roll them in cane sugar before placing the cookies on the baking sheet. A few weeks back, Zulka brand sent me a bag of their Morena Pure Cane Sugar to review. So I used that sugar to coat my cookies.

Taste-wise, Zulka is pretty spot-on with any other cane sugar or evaporated cane juice. I typically buy my cane sugar (unrefined, unbleached) in the bulk bins at Whole Foods, and in a blind taste test, I probably wouldn't be able to tell the difference between Zulka and the bulk bin sugar.

But here's why it's awesome — Zulka has a commitment to sustainability. No fossil fuels are used to power their sugar mills. Instead, they produce their own electricity using leftover fibers from cane processing. They recirculate the water in their irrigation systems. And their sugar cane comes from small family-owned farms.

Plus, I noticed that the sugar crystals look more glittery than the bulk bin sugar I typically buy, which was great for these cookies since the sugar is more of a decoration.

Alright, I promise to show you everyone's cookies tomorrow night!