Luxor4u

Hi there,
Can someone please enlighten me where in Luxor I can get hold of white fine-grained sugar suitable for baking? Or, please give me a hint on how to bake cakes on the normal "yellow" sugar. It seems to me impossible to mix it fluffy with egg!
Also, I am in need of findingcocoa powder. Trying to make a chocolate cake on "drinking chocolate powder", as the girl in the supermarket recommended, ended up in disaster!
Any help with this matter would be much appreciated!

Carolin

Hi there, you'll find caster sugar in Omar's; they sell white fine grain sugar too

I often make cakes and fine that Dreem Cocoa Powder is the best - you'll find that in Omar's as well

Good old Omars

carolinjohansson wrote:Hi there,
Can someone please enlighten me where in Luxor I can get hold of white fine-grained sugar suitable for baking? Or, please give me a hint on how to bake cakes on the normal "yellow" sugar. It seems to me impossible to mix it fluffy with egg!
Carolin

[face=Comic Sans MS]I'm not familiar with the 'yellow sugar' you describe but I am guessing that it is of a larger, coarser grain than the white granulated or even finer caster suger we would use in the UK for baking. If this is the case you can:
a) pop it in a food processor or blender with a metal blade and give it a quick 'whizz' to break it down.

b) put it in a plastic bag and roll firmly over it with a rolling pin.[/face]

I have been looking for caster sugar for months and never seen it. Has it got a different name in Omars.

Tried the blender method and got icing sugar ok, but you have to be damm quick to stop it in time for caster.

Tony
Karnak

Tony - I'll look out for the name of the caster sugar next time I'm in Omar's. All I can remember is that it's on the bottom shelf opposite the teabags

Thanks for the replies!

I guess I have to check Omar again; didn't find any of it the last two times I tried.
I will search the shelves more careful next time, now I know I should be able to find it there!

C

It sometimes pays to look on all the shelves in Omar as they have a strange idea about what things go together sometimes, and even that isnt consistent.

Tony
Karnak

Is caster sugar the one that is called "sukkar poudre" or is that the icing sugar????

When I first cam here I couldn't find caster sugar and had to resort to the blender method - It sort of worked - but like Tony said, you had to be quick about turning the blender off else you ended up with a mound of icing sugar. The pulse button worked the best.

TONY wrote:It sometimes pays to look on all the shelves in Omar as they have a strange idea about what things go together sometimes, and even that isnt consistent.

Tony
Karnak

They have the same problem up here - caster sugar and icing sugar are always next to the flour. Before I could read Arabic - I lost count of the number of times I would get home and discover I had bought yet another kilo of icing sugar and not flour as I thought!

countessa wrote:Tony - I'll look out for the name of the caster sugar next time I'm in Omar's. All I can remember is that it's on the bottom shelf opposite the teabags

I know where the t-bags are.

I was in Omar today. Couldnt find caster, but did get a very much finer sugar then we get in our neck of the woods. I will try it with shortbread this weekend, which actually is better with a slight crunchy texture.

Tony
Karnak

How do the Egyptians get away with it Using the very coarse sugar for baking still seems to work okay for them.

If I have coarser sugar I often mix it with eggs and almost let it melt first with eggs before I start whisking.
I ask my friends to bring me cocoa powder when they come to Egypt. Can't help you with that because haven't found good brand from Egypt, sorry

The best sugar for making cakes with is el Doha and the best cocoa powder is Dreem - makes delicious vanilla marble cakes

There is no reason why you cannot use cane suger for cake-making. Refined beet sugar is less sweet, or you could use icing sugar, honey, or golden syrum, or even sugar-water to make cakes. If you are making sweet pastry, then icing sugar could be used, and very little of it is necessary to sweeten. This prevents the pastry taking on a 'spotty' or grained appearance and gives a softer and better texture to the pastry.

If you are combining eggs and sugar together, the sugar will disolve more quickly if the eggs are warm. Indeed, they should be warm for cakes, and not taken from the fridge. Cold eggs and warm sugar or fat causes curdling. So place your eggs into a bowl of tepid water/warm for 10 minutes before mixing, and your sugar will disolve quicker.

I rather depends what you are making, but sugar only usually acts as a sweetener, so one could use any sweetener, even saccarine, as in diabetic cakes.