Perhaps you’ve had a different experience than I with this cute little brown sugar bear.  It is made of specially fired clay that, after being soaked in water for 20-30 minutes, is supposed to help maintain the moisture in your bag of brown sugar so that it remains soft and clump-free for up to 6 months.

I don’t think so…at least, not in my home!  My box of brown sugar was hard as a rock a couple of weeks after I’d put the cute little bear in there, and there were clumps of rock-like pebbles of brown sugar surrounding it since they’d gotten wet when they first made contact with him and then hardened up.  Yuck!  And frustrating, since I was trying to make a batch of chocolate chip cookies and my tummy was grumbling and now I had no brown sugar immediately available!

Here’s my secret.  It’s fail-proof.  I’ve never had a problem since I started doing this…

Once you’ve opened that bag of brown sugar, grab a small ziploc plastic bag to seal it in.  Then store that bag-within-a-bag in the brown sugar box or whatever container it came in or you like to store it in.

Always soft and always moist.

Sorry little bear.  Maybe I’ll try to use you in a bag of crackers or chips to suck out moisture and keep them crispy.  But, I’ll be sure to put your heavy little body at the bottom of the bag to avoid digging into a bag full of crumbs the next time I want a handful of Cape Cod’s!