Unexpected kitchen tricks

[Anonymous]

I made cinnamon rolls for breakfast this morning and they were almost done when I realized I had no confectioners sugar for the cream cheese frosting (did a lot of Christmas baking this year, lol). I didn’t realize you can literally just pulverize granulated sugar and you’ve got a pretty close approximation. I used the small blender jar on my Blendtec and only did a bit more than the one cup called for (I weighed do have an equivalent amount). Didn’t use corn starch because it didn’t seem necessary. It worked out great and I didn’t have to scramble with only 8 minutes left to go! I don’t know why this had never occurred to me before.

I also used kefir (plain) instead of buttermilk but have also used lemon juice/vinegar and milk, or yogurt and water.

What other surprising tricks or discoveries do you have in the kitchen?

(And here’s the cinnamon rolls recipe-quick bread style, in case you are interested: https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1022842-easy-no-yeast-cinnamon-rolls?smid=ck-recipe-iOS-share)