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A limited edition release from our Spice Club, this rich and satisfying swap for brown sugar is full of toasted caramel notes, like the crystallized essence of a bowl of cereal milk. Compared to our Coconut Sugar, it has a deeper and more complex character as well as a crackly crunch. That makes it perfect for topping cookies as sanding sugar, tossing with granola or stirring into yogurt or oatmeal. Think of it as a fine finishing salt, but sweet.
Burlap & Barrel single origin sugars are our way of showing that sugar is a flavorful ingredient, not just a source of sweetness. Use this toasted palm sugar to add depth to Thai curries, tomato sauces and barbecue rubs. We think its tawny toffee sweetness pairs nicely with nuts and browned butter; consider sprinkling it over a pan of blondies loaded with cashews, coconut and chunks of white chocolate.
Highlights
Origin:
Kampong Speu, Cambodia
Process:
Collected from palm flowers & cooked over wood fires in small batches
Tasting notes:
Toffee • Cereal Milk • Brown Butter
Ingredients
Unrefined palm nectar (Borassus flabellifer)
Cooking tips
- Sprinkle over gingersnaps or snickerdoodles before baking for a caramelized crunch.
- Stir into rice pudding to make it taste like a bowl of cereal milk.
- Turn bland berries extraordinary by tossing them with toasted palm sugar. Let stand for ten minutes and top with whipped cream.
Recipes
Sourcing
Our partner sugar makers craft this sugar by hand with traditional methods in Cambodia’s tropical Kampong Speu province, where palmyra palms grow as tall as 60 feet. Acrobatic workers climb the narrow trunks to harvest sap from flower stalks that form near the leaves. They often bend and massage the stalks before and during tapping to keep that sap flowing; then they direct it through bamboo tubes into buckets, which they collect twice a day.
Fresh palm sap ferments and spoils quickly, so shortly after collection, a crew of sugar makers boils it down in enormous wood-fired pans. The sap loses as much as 90% of its volume during boiling. Once it reaches the right sugar concentration, workers spin it by hand and sift it through bamboo filters to create crystals of the right size and crunch. They finish by further dehydrating the crystals in shallow pans over low fires. The result is a sugar that tastes as complex as it was to make—an ingredient built on generations of artisans’ skills.
