Organic coconut sugar — unrefined, soft brown, and tasting of butterscotch rather than of coconut. A direct one-for-one replacement for white or brown sugar in almost anything you bake or stir.
Where it comes from, which is not the nut
This is not made from coconut flesh. A climber goes up the palm, cuts the flower stem before it can set fruit, and ties a container beneath the cut. Sweet sap runs out — neera — and is collected twice a day, boiled down in an open pan until it thickens, and dried into crystals. Nothing is added and nothing is refined out.
That is the whole process, and it is the same one used for palm sugar across South and South-East Asia. It is also worth understanding the trade-off: a flower stem tapped for sap does not become a coconut. A palm is generally used for one or the other. Coconut sugar is not free of consequence, it simply has a different one.
What it tastes like
Butterscotch, molasses and a faint smokiness — close to a soft light muscovado, and nothing at all like coconut. The colour and depth come from the minerals and organic acids left in when it is not refined, exactly as with unrefined cane sugar.
Because it is a whole, unrefined sugar it is slightly less sweet than white sugar by weight, and it browns a little faster in the oven. Neither is a problem; both are worth knowing.
Using it
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Swap 1:1 for white or brown sugar by weight in cakes, biscuits, granola and crumbles.
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Coffee and tea — it dissolves well and adds a caramel note. Excellent in a flat white; less good in a delicate green tea, where it takes over.
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Marinades and sauces — the molasses character is a genuine advantage in anything with soy, ginger or chilli in it.
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Meringue and clear syrups — do not. It will colour them beige and add a flavour you do not want.
The crystals are slightly coarser and less uniform than white sugar. For a smooth-textured cake, cream it into the butter for a little longer than usual, or pulse it briefly in a blender first.
Being honest about it
You will read that coconut sugar has a low glycaemic index, that it is full of minerals, and that it is a healthy sugar. Here is the position we are comfortable defending:
It is sugar. Around three-quarters of it is sucrose — the same molecule as table sugar. It contains genuinely more potassium, magnesium and iron than refined sugar does, and a little inulin, but the amounts you would eat in a normal day contribute almost nothing to your intake of any of them. The low-GI figure that circulates comes from a single small study and has not been reliably reproduced.
There is no authorised EU health claim for coconut sugar, and we are not going to imply one. Buy it because it is unrefined, because it tastes better than white sugar in most things, and because you like knowing how it was made. Then count it in your day exactly as you would count any other sugar.
Storage
Cool, dry, airtight. Like all unrefined sugars it can harden into a block if it dries out or clump if it gets damp. A slice of apple or a terracotta sugar saver in the jar keeps it loose; if it does set hard, a few seconds in a blender restores it.
Iswari
NOW Foods
Dragon Superfoods
