Brown sugar is coated in molasses, and molasses holds moisture. Every time the bag is opened, a bit of that moisture escapes into the cupboard, and eventually the crystals glue themselves into one solid lump. Paper bags are the worst for this.
Step one is boring but it matters: tip the sugar into an airtight tub. That buys you a few weeks. If you only bake now and then, though, a tub on its own won’t keep it soft for months, and that’s where a little lump of terracotta comes in.
The Brown Sugar Bear has been around for years and it’s still the one people recommend. It’s a bear-shaped disc of fired clay. Soak it in water for 20 minutes, pat it dry, push it into the sugar and close the lid. The clay gives that water back slowly, and the maker says one soak keeps brown sugar soft for roughly three to six months.
The bit most people don’t know is that it works backwards too. Put it in a jar dry, without soaking it, and it pulls moisture out instead, so it’ll stop salt clumping or crackers going limp. Soaked, it’ll also keep biscuits, marshmallows and dried fruit from drying out. The clay is food safe and you just re-soak it when the sugar starts to stiffen.
Is it a bit silly? Yes. It’s a clay teddy bear. It’s also one of the easiest ways to stop wasting half a bag of sugar, and it lives in the tub, out of sight.
Already holding a brick of sugar?
Put the lump in a bowl, cover it with a damp sheet of kitchen roll and microwave it in 20-second bursts, breaking it up with a fork as you go. Use it straight away, because it hardens again as it cools. No rush? Seal it in a tub overnight with a slice of bread. By morning the bread is stale and the sugar is soft enough to spoon.
