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Whether you know it as confectioners’, 10x, or icing sugar, here’s how to make and use this baking staple at home. By Molly Baz and Hannah Lee Leidy June 16, 2025 Image may contain Confectionery Food Sweets Breakfast Seasoning and Sesame

Whether the package you pick up from the grocery store bears the name powdered sugar, confectioners’ sugar, icing sugar, or 10x, the contents inside are all the same type of sugar. This delicate, ultra-fine powder is a kitchen workhorse. It thickens and adds structure to frostings, gives a tender, melt-in-your-mouth consistency to shortbread and other confections, and it’s a keeper purely for aesthetics too, with its ability to instantly zhuzh an otherwise meh-looking dessert simply by passing it through a fine-mesh strainer.

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