Give Homemade Pie Crust A Sweet Shine With This Type Of Sugar

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If you've ever gazed into a pastry display case and marveled at how perfectly crispy and shiny the baked goods look, you're not alone. While flaky crusts with a beautiful shine are business as usual in a professional bakery, those visuals can seem challenging to replicate at home. However, there's a simple solution. What many of those bakeries use to achieve a sweet shine on pie crusts is a sprinkling of Turbinado sugar.

Turbinado sugar features a golden coloring and mild, slightly caramel-like flavor, which it gets from molasses. Compared to granulated white, brown, or even powdered sugar, it boasts larger crystals, which keep their shine and texture when baked on the exterior of a pastry crust. As the granules give pie crust a lovely extra crunch as you eat, they can also act as a bit of a mask if your crust isn't as flaky or well-baked as you'd hoped. And, if you don't have any Turbinado sugar handy, Demerara sugar is only slightly different and can make for a similar enhancement to your homemade pie crust.

To adhere the Turbinado sugar to your pie crust for a gorgeous shine, it must be done before baking. Start by making an egg wash, usually an egg yolk mixed with about a tablespoon or so of heavy cream. The egg wash will not only help the Turbinado sugar adhere to the pie crust but also help to give the pastry a golden shine. Liberally coat the egg-washed pie crust with Turbinado sugar so it has an evenly distributed coating that will catch and reflect the light after baking for the ultimate shine. If you're making a double-layered pie crust, either solid or latticed, make sure to evenly coat the entire surface of exposed dough. If you can't be bothered to make a homemade pie crust, you could elevate a store-bought pie crust in the same way by brushing an egg wash along the edges of the raw crust before a quick bake and sprinkling with a generous coating of Turbinado sugar.

Turbinado is also commonly used to top muffins and some cookies for an extra crunch and shiny finish. It is even a great sweetener for coffee or lattes as it has a richer flavor than white sugar, and you've likely seen it in coffee shops in small brown paper packets called Sugar In The Raw. Before you embark on your next homemade pie crust journey, check out our fail-proof tips so you can get the most delicious, flaky, and shiny pie crust.