This year, the ceremonial holiday baking honey badger did not see his shadow on November 1st, signaling an early start to the baking season.
My excel workbook has been developed and the calendar is populated. I don’t know about you, but I had so much fun with last year’s guess the butter contest that I thought I’d bring back a similar challenge this year.
Only with sugar.
Sugar sources include granulated (I use superfine), brown (packed) and confectioner’s. It does not include sanding sugar used in decorating. But does include sugar used in icings and frostings.
I decided to use ounces as the unit of measure because volumetric measurements can be deceiving. Whereas, an ounce is an ounce is an ounce.
If you are like me and need a little conversion to contextualize the measurement (to this day when someone talks yardage, I have to first convert whatever number it is into short-course pool lengths before it has any meaning to me), I give you the relative half-cup-to-ounce ratios for my own kitchen scale:
Remember, 1 pound is 16 ounces.
I’ve got a couple of clues to help inform your guesses:
- Everything I’m making includes at least one form of the sugars list above.
- I have 14 different treats planned for this year. This includes at least two frosted/iced items and three items I consider “candy” where the sugar-to-other ingredient ratio is higher than, say, shortbread. Oh, and one item gets rolled in additional conferctioner’s sugar post-production.
- While this number is relatively meaningless without naming the actual baked goods to be made, the estimated total number of units is about 2,000.
Want to play along for a prize?
- I will update the total of number of ounces each Tuesday beginning next Tuesday, November 19th continuing with the grande finale on Tuesday, December 10th.
- To be entered into the running, you must add your guess in the comments section in total ounces by midnight next Monday (November 18th).
- The closest guess without going over will get an extra batch of baked goods; winner’s choice.
This blog post signals the official start of the holiday season!!! Not to mention that the white twinkly lights are being installed on the Getty Center trees as I type this. Well, sounds like you’re going pretty big this year, so my guess – which is probably way off due to my bad math – is going to be 925 ounces total, or approximately 3 Balous + 2 Bellas.