A long time ago, in a previous life, I was dining at a rather pricey restaurant downtown with friends (that WAS a long time ago!). It was a sort of a "bistro" style eatery, with fair trade coffee and locally-sourced greens in the salads. Yeah, one of those. But the thing I remember the most about that meal was the little ceramic cups presented with the coffee, containing hand-crafted sugar cubes!
They weren't cubes per se, more ovoid lumps, with rough shapes and edges, and a cheerful rustic feel that bordered on the pretentious.
For no reason whatsoever, I was remembering that evening the other day, and those rustic sugar lumps, and I knew they were embarassingly simple, so why not give it a try? So I did!
With about a cup of granulated sugar in a small mixing bowl (no real measurements here really, that would fly in the face of the rustic-ness of the project), I added enough cold water to get the sugar to the consistency of wet sand. Not so much that it melted the sugar, just to get it wet and so it stuck together.
I didn't have the patience or motivation to try to form actual egg-shapes, I was content with half-spheres created with a 1/2 teaspoon measuring spoon. It was simple enough to scoop up 1/2 teaspoon of the wet sugar, press it into the spoon, then gently tap it out onto a ceramic plate (you could use parchment paper, a Silpat(tm), or any non-porous surface), and let dry an hour or more.
Once dry and hardened, I brushed off the crumbs, filled the sugar bowl, and enjoyed a perfectly smug cup of tea using my pretentious little sugar lumps.
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