[gastronomy] Brown sugar formats?

[siderea]

I basically use brown sugar one quarter cup at a time. I don't go through it terribly briskly, so the remainder of the half-pound sack has ample opportunity to set up into a solid brick over the course of ifs lifespan. As it senesces, extracting a quarter cup from the package requires more and more work, involving the whole nuke-it-with-a-wet-paper-towel-in-a-ziploc and hitting-with-a-hammer and mushing-disolving-lumps-with-a-fork thing. This is a hassle, and sometimes taxing of my right hand.

I find myself wondering if I can get or make brown sugar into quarter cup units. Is there are known solution to this problem? Like is there a commercial product that will solve this for me? Apparently "Brown Sugar Cubes" are a thing; can I use those in place of loose brown sugar in cooking? (I'm disolving them in a sauce, anyway.)

Alternatively, the obvious thing is to get a whole lot of little ziplocs and take a fresh package of sugar and measure it out into quarter cup units, but that seems somewhat wasteful of ziplocs. Or maybe I could pack the sugar into a mould of some sort and make my own quarter-cup bricks (which might be tedious to use, but less tedious to just get out of the package) and then store them all in one big ziploc. What fraction of a cup is a standard ice cube in an ice cube tray?

Or is there just some way to keep a sack of brown sugar from fossilizing?

Ideas? Suggestions?

ETA: I am now the proud owner of a terra cotta sugar maintenance widget. (h/t m_danson)