Palm Sugar

Palm sugar is a sweetener made by boiling collected sap until it thickens, drawn from any of several palm trees, chiefly the palmyra, date, nipa, aren and coconut palms, which can be used interchangeably despite small compositional differences. The palmyra palm grows across Africa and Asia, the date palm across the Mediterranean and Asia, the nipa palm along tropical coastlines, the aren palm in coastal Asia, and the coconut palm around the Indian and Pacific oceans. The finished sugar is sold either as a syrup in bottles or solidified into bricks and cakes ranging from golden brown to nearly black, and it is used across Asia, the Middle East and North Africa in both sweet and savory cooking, known locally as gula jawa or gula aren in Indonesia and gula melaka in Malaysia.