Strawberry Sugar

Sprinkle sweet Strawberry Sugar to your desserts and drinks to give them extra pink pizzazz. It’s easy to make with just two ingredients.

Homemade Strawberry Sugar recipe

Rimming a glass with salt or sugar is one of the easiest, prettiest ways to elevate a cocktail.

But what if you go beyond just regular sugar and salt? You can add lots of flavors by incorporating spices, herbs and fruit.

For example, mixing lime zest with salt makes the best margarita salt to add to your tequila creations. If you prefer a sweeter flavor on the rim, the same process works with sugar too.

Strawberry Sugar is a delicious, pretty pink sugar you can make by crumbling up dehydrated berries with your fingers and mixing the powder with granulated sugar to add berry flavor. 

More strawberry recipes: Chocolate-Covered Strawberries • Strawberry Daiquiri • Strawberry Mule

Why you’ll love this recipe

You’ll love this strawberry sugar recipe, for a few reasons:

• Strawberry sugar is a pretty pink sugar you can add to the rims of drinks or sprinkle over desserts.
• It’s easy to make sugar with the flavor of sweet strawberries with only two ingredients.
• It makes a great gift for bakers and cocktail lovers. 

You’ll want to use strawberry sugar on everything during strawberry season! And when you’re craving those late spring strawberries during the long winter, too. 

Tools & glassware

You don’t need special equipment here — you can use your hands! (Clean hands, of course.)

A mortar and pestle can help you crush the dehydrated berries. A food processor can also be used to make a fine strawberry sugar.

Store the finished sugar in a glass jar or other food-safe, airtight container.

Ingredients for Strawberry Sugar

You only need two simple ingredients to make this recipe. Here’s what to grab at the grocery store:

• Dehydrated strawberries: You can find freeze-dried strawberries in the snack section of the grocery store. Slices are a little easier to crumble, but whole berries can work. Just be sure to cut them down. If you have fresh strawberries, you’ll need to dehydrate the berries first. 
• Granulated sugar: Don’t use brown sugar — white sugar is what you want here. Cane sugar or organic cane sugar will work too, as long as it is light in color. 

Variations and substitutions

Mix things up and try one of these variations on this recipe:

• Fine strawberry sugar: Blend the berries and sugar together in a food processor to make a fine powder.
• Strawberry sea salt: Replace the sugar with coarse salt. You may want to add more strawberries to taste.
• Strawberry basil sugar: Add a little bit of dried basil to the sugar for a sweet, herbal twist.
• Spicy strawberry sugar: Add a pinch or two of cayenne pepper to make this a sweet-and-spicy sugar.
• Other flavored sugars: Use other freeze-dried fruit like freeze-dried raspberries or lemon zest to make other sugar flavors.

How to make Strawberry Sugar

Here’s how to make this delicious strawberry sugar recipe:

1. With dry hands or a mortar and pestle, crush the dehydrated strawberries into a powder.
2. Add sugar and strawberry dust to a bowl or jar and stir or shake together.
3. You can crumble more strawberries if a brighter color or stronger flavor is desired. 
4. Store in a food-safe, airtight container like a mason jar.

This recipe makes ¼ cup, but you can easily multiply it if you want more. You’ll need about 20-30 strawberry slices per cup of sugar. 

How to rim a glass

Once you know how to rim a glass, you’ll love adding them to all your margaritas and other cocktails. Here’s how to do it:

1. Pour some strawberry sugar on a plate.
2. Next, you need to moisten the glass so the sugar will stick. Rub a lime wedge around the glass’s edge or gently dip the rim in strawberry syrup or maple syrup and let any excess drip off.
3. Then roll or dip the rim of the glasses in the sugar to coat the rim.

Tips & tricks

Here are some tips and tricks for making this recipe:

• Use granulated sugar so you get the brightest pink color.
• Keep your strawberry sugar stored in an airtight container.
• If the sugar becomes hard, you’re not out of luck. You can soften sugar!

Uses for Strawberry Sugar

There are so many ways to use this pink strawberry sugar! If you have favorite ways to use it, I’d love to hear it in the comments below.

You can use this recipe in lots of baking and cooking recipes:

• Coat baked goods like strawberry donuts, coffee cake, strawberry shortcake or your favorite dessert.
• Sprinkle it on top of fruit muffins, heart sugar cookies, cakes, cupcakes, quick breads or a fruit pie.
• Add a strawberry topping to breakfast foods. Dust pancakes, French toast and waffles or sprinkle it on a bowl of plain yogurt or oatmeal. 
• Dust it on top of a fruit salad or even on top of fresh fruit to add more sweetness. It would also be delicious on top of baked peaches.

Use a bit on the rim of your cocktails to jazz them up:

• The most classic, obvious use would be a margarita. Try it on the rim of this delicious strawberry margarita or frozen strawberry basil margaritas.
• You could also add it to the rim of a strawberry martini for an extra sweet touch.
• Add it to the rims of strawberry mimosas for brunch to take them over the top.

And you can even stir this strawberry-flavored sugar into drinks. Try stirring it into lemonade or iced tea to add the sweet flavor of strawberries. It would even work stirred into salad dressings. 

And if you have leftover sugar, you can use it to make a homemade simple syrup that you can mix into drinks. (You will want to strain it!)

FAQ

More sugar & salt recipes

Try one of these delicious recipes for flavored salts and sugars to use in cocktails and baking: 

• Bloody Mary Salt
• Lavender Sugar
• Cinnamon Sugar
• Margarita Sugar