Indulgent Comfort Food: Demerara Sugar Cookies and Demerara Vanilla Hot Chocolate

Demerara, mon amour

Fellow foodies: If you’ve never tried Demerara sugar, you’re in for a taste sensation.

Over the weekend, give yourself—and your family—a treat with these two delicious, easy recipes, below, for Demerara Sugar Cookies and Rich Demerara Vanilla Hot Chocolate.

I love Demerara sugar insanely. I use it in baking, add a touch in savory sauces, stir it into tea and sometimes eat it right from the sugar bowl.

A natural dark sugar made from the first pressing of sugar cane—never beets—Demerara has complex creamy molasses flavor notes.

Sugar milled the old fashioned way

The sugar is made on the Island of Mauritius using an old-fashioned milling process. No chemicals, bleaches or additives are used. After the cane is pressed, Demerara syrup is left to evaporate slowly, allowing it to retain trace vitamins and minerals.

This painstaking production makes for—I believe—a much fuller, nuanced flavor than commercial sugar.

But I admit part of Demerara’s pleasure is purely aesthetic. It’s has a sparkling golden brown color and rough rounded, granular crystals that stay crunchy after baking.

I use Demerara anytime brown sugar is called for—and many times when it isn’t, as with the two recipes, below.

Domino offers a very affordable 24-ounce package of Demerara. Ask your grocer to stock it or buy it online. In a pinch, you could substitute raw Hawaiian turbinado sugar—but not regular, moist brown sugar.

Demerara Sugar Cookies

Bite into a Demerara Sugar Cookie and the crunchy shell yields to a pillowy butter cookie inside. These rich cookies are the perfect foil to hot black tea—or Rich Demerara Vanilla Hot Chocolate, see recipe below.

1 cup butter, softened to room temperature
1 cup white sugar
1 cup Demerara sugar
2 eggs
1 tablespoon milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 cup unbleached flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon salt

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. In large bowl, cream together butter and white sugar and ½ cup Demerara sugar. Beat until fluffy.
3. Add eggs one at a time, beating until fluffy after each addition.
4. Add milk, then vanilla, beating well after each addition.
5. In separate bowl or large Pyrex measuring cup mix together flour, baking powder and salt. Mix dry ingredients well—back in ye olde times past, you would have been told to sift these ingredients. At Copywriters’ Kitchen we know you’re busy and will never ask you to sift ingredients. But blend thoroughly. See photo, below.

   I use a strange old whisk, the Formay Helper—the only one of it’s kind in the world! Here’s its backstory: The whisk was given to my grandfather in the 1930s. As a grocery store executive in California’s San Joaquin Valley he often received food- and cooking-related gizmos from his vendors. The stamp on the Formay Helper’s says it “Mixes shortening with flour, butter with sugar, removes eggs, vegetables from hot water, crushes berries, etc. Mashes and whips potatoes, separates egg whites from yolks.” And it DOES! When I Googled “Formay Helper” I got no matches–a first for me.

   Know anything about the Formay Helper? Please contact me.











6. With whatever implement you have on hand, mix dry ingredients into creamed butter/sugar/eggs mixture. Chill dough for at least 30 minutes. At this point you may also store the dough in a tightly sealed container in refrigerator. Dough keeps excellently in fridge for more than a week. When frozen it maintains flavor and texture almost indefinitely.
7. To bake cookies, shape dough into 1” balls.
8. Put remaining ½ cup Demerara sugar in small, high-side bowl. A custard cup works well.
9. Roll cookie balls in sugar, using spoon to press sugar onto dough balls—the thicker the better.



10. Place balls 2 inches apart on lightly greased cookie sheet, see photo, below. Try to avoid spilling sugar on the cookie sheet—it burns and makes the sheet difficult to re-use without washing. And make sure dough balls are at least 2” away from edge of sheet. Cookies placed closer to edge tend to burn—you won’t want to waste one of these morceaux.

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11. Bake 6-8 minutes. Do not over bake—you want crunch outside and buttery softness inside.





12. Let sit on sheet for 1-2 minutes. Transfer to rack to cool slightly. Eat while warm with glass of ice-cold whole milk—or mug of Demerara Vanilla Hot Chocolate, recipe below.

Variation: Demerara Snickerdoodles—add 1 teaspoon cinnamon to the half cup of Demerara sugar. Roll dough balls in sugar/cinnamon mixture, see #9, above.

Makes 5 dozen 1½” cookies.

Rich Demerara Vanilla Hot Chocolate

Vanilla, caramel-molasses and, of course, chocolate flavors meld together in this indulgent Hot Chocolate. Slightly less sweet than your usual cocoa.

For each cup of hot chocolate use:
1 scant tablespoon cocoa
1 heaping tablespoon Demerara sugar
1 tablespoon cold water
Pinch of sea salt
1 cup whole milk plus splash half-and-half, if desired
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 tablespoons whipped heavy cream, slightly sweetened and flavored with vanilla (optional)

1. In saucepan over low flame, combine cocoa, sugar, water and salt. Stir until cocoa blends and sugar is no longer grainy. See photos, below

















2. Heat on low flame until hot but before surface breaks into a simmer.
3. Turn off flame, stir in vanilla and whisk hot chocolate until frothy.
4. Ladle into mugs, add dollop of whipped cream and serve.