Kitchen Dictionary

Palm sugar was once made from the sugary sap of the Palmyra palm or the date palm. Now it is made from the sap of the sago coconut palms, and sold as coconut sugar. Palm sugar is a golden brown paste sold in cans, tubs, tins or blocks.

Ingredient

Nutrition Facts
Calculated for 1 cup
Calories 774
Calories from Fat 0		(0%)
Amount Per Serving		%DV
	Total Fat 0.0g	0%
	Saturated Fat 0.0g	0%
	Monounsaturated Fat 0.0g
	Polyunsaturated Fat 0.0g
	Trans Fat 0.0g
Cholesterol 0mg		0%
Sodium 0mg		0%
Potassium 4mg		0%
Total Carbohydrate 200.0g		66%
	Dietary Fiber 0.0g	0%
	Sugars 199.8g
Protein 0.0g		0%
Vitamin A 0mcg		0%
Vitamin B6 0.0mg		0%
Vitamin B12 0.0mcg		0%
Vitamin C 0mg		0%
Vitamin E 0mcg		0%
Calcium 2mg		0%
Iron 0mg		0%
how is this calculated?

Season: available year-round

How to select: Palm sugar is easily found in Asian or India markets. It should crumble when it is squeezed.

Substitutions: Mix 1 cup dark brown sugar, 2 tsp molasses, jaggery, piloncillo, and brown sugar, maple sugar, or date sugar.

Posted :

http://www.recipezaar.com/library/getentry.zsp?id=894

The Sugaring Tradition
With the coming of dawn the silhouettes of island farmers can be seen climbing high into the swaying palms, tapping the fragrant flower spikes that hang within the green fronds.
The sweet nectar that bleeds from these flowers is a treasured resource.
Kettle boiled over an open hearth fire within an hour of harvest the nectar slowly evaporates into a caramel sugar unlike any other.
Thickened to a buttery paste, this sugar is then ladled into waiting coconut shell molds to cool and set.
Subtly sweet with an almost haunting aroma of smoke and caramel,
Coconut Palm Sugar is nothing short of artisanal perfection.

Modern Love
We love sweet… and Coconut Palm Sugars were just about the most incredible sweet we had ever experienced.
Unfortunately, traditional sugar loaves are not the easiest sugar to utilize when working in the kitchen. So we went back to the sugar shack with traditional producers in Bali Island and beyond to develop a more “user-friendly” product that could, quite literally, forever take the place of all refined sugar. We call it “semut” or ant sugar, because ants love these new tiny crystals of sugar too…perfect for carrying away to their home…a significantly harder task with the traditional large sugar loaves!
By grinding the traditional sugars and applying dry heat we’ve been able to make a fine ground Coconut Palm Sugar that can be used in place of any fine sugars.
Soft, dark and crumbly like a good Muscavado, Demerara or brown and yet, unlike these high-moisture, high-molasses content relatives, Heritage Palm Sugars are dry and remain free-flowing, rarely caking except in high humidity situations.
Today, Big Tree Farms operates a number of small cooperative maintained Sugarhouses for the production of Heritage Palm Sugars.


The Sugarhouses are essentially commercial kitchens, allowing producers to continue the tradition of small batch coconut palm sugar production and at the same time have a product that is clean, free of any contamination, and consistently of the highest quality.
Continually striving for new and exciting products that will support the now-expanding harvests of these traditional artisan producers, we began grinding sun-dried ginger family roots into the sugar…the marriage of ginger family crops and sugar has a history in Indonesia that extends well beyond written record…The result are a line of sugars unlike any other…Coconut Palm Sugar with Ginger Root is spicy and headwarming while Coconut Palm Sugar with Turmeric Root is exotic and incredibly smooth tasting…

Posting from : http://www.bigtreebali.com/sugar.html

WHAT IS PALM SUGAR?

Palm sugar is a natural sweetener made from the sap of palm trees.

When the palms are from 15 to 20 years old they commence flowering and it is only then that they yield the sweet sap from which palm sugar is made.

Toddy tappers have to be extremely agile to shin up palm trees with only a circle of rope around their ankles for support. The sap flows when the inflorescence is tapped but first it must be beaten (gently) with a mallet for a couple of days. A small slice is taken off the end and a receptacle (usually an earthenware pot or gourd) hung close to the cut to collect the sap each night. The sap is known as 'sweet toddy' and for those lucky enough to be around when this is brought in, has a taste of ambrosia. The fresh sweet toddy is boiled down shortly after collection to make palm syrup and palm sugar. If this is not done, within a few hours the 'sweet toddy' ferments into a sour, potent brew called toddy, a very intoxicating drink. It is the 'cheap grog' of tropical lands and is not fit to drink the next day.

To concentrate the nectar into solid sugar, the fresh juice is boiled down and evaporated before being poured into bamboo sections to form cylindrical shapes, or into coconut shells so they emerge as large shallow hemispheres, or into small baskets woven of palm leaves. In this form, the sugar has to be scraped or chipped from the rather hard block. This gur as it is called in India, or jaggery as it is known in Sri Lanka and Burma, gula melaka in Malaysia or gula jawa in Indonesia, is used on a daily basis in these countries as a sweetener.There is no identical Western counterpart, but there are substitutes which give a reasonable flavour likeness.Palm sugar is sold in rounded cakes, cylinders, blocks or large plastic or glass jars. This sugar, even when soft, can be extremely dense and very sticky.

source : http://gulasemut.blogspot.com/

Palm Sugar

Palm sugar was originally made from the sugary sap of the Palmyra palm or the date palm. Now it is also made from the sap of the sago and coconut palms and may be sold as "coconut sugar." The sugar is a golden brown paste, sold in tubes, blocks or tin cans. It may be light-colored or dark, soft and gooey or hard. As a lightly-processed product of cottage industry, it varies greatly from batch to batch.

In Thai cuisine, palm and "coconut sugar" (nahm dtahn bpeep/buk and nahm dtahn maprao) are used interchangeably. However, it may be an important distinction for those concerned with frugivory that "coconut sugar" is in no way derived from the coconut fruit itself. Quoted in the linked thaifoodandtravel.com page below is the following clarification: "Although the names are used interchangeably, palm sugar and coconut sugar are not the same. One comes from the palmyra or sugar palm and the other from coconut palm, but both are produced from the sweet, watery sap that drips from cut flower buds."

In Indonesia, sugar made from the Borassus (Palmyra palm) is known as Gula Jawa ("Javanese sugar") or gula merah (red sugar)

Gula melaka is made by first extracting the sap from the flower bud of a coconut tree. Several slits are cut into the bud and a pot is tied underneath the bud to collect the sap. Then, the sap is boiled until it thickens after which, in the traditional way, it is poured into bamboo tubes between 3-5 inches in length, and left to solidify to form cylindrical cake blocks. Alternatively it can be poured into glass jars or plastic bags. Gula melaka is used in some savoury dishes but mainly in the local desserts and cakes of the Southeast Asian region. Gula Melaka Sago pudding, shown in the picture, is one of many desserts made with gula melaka. It is among some of the more popular gastronomic delights of Peranakan (Chinese-Malay) origin. Basically, this dish consists of a bland sago pudding served with gula melaka syrup. In some ways it resembles the international Creme Caramel and differ only in the ingredients used. It can be served either chaud or froid. To enrich the pudding, coconut milk or 'santan' its Malay name, is added to it. Santan is the South-East Asian non-dairy counterpart of the dairy cream, the latter either whipped or in liquid form, is used mainly in Western cuisines but both add richness or provide viscosity when these are required.

Bangladeshi's have two varieties of Palmyra sugar. One is unrefined and is in the form of hard blocks of dark brown sugar. This known as Karuppatti. This is used as a sweetener for making certain types of cakes and biscuits. The other is refined and is available as granules of crystalline sugar. This is known as Panam KaRkaNdu. This has medicinal value. It has the power to liquify phlegm from the lungs. It is also profusely used in treatment of sore throat when dissolved in boiled concentrated milk. Musicians use it on a regular basis in combination with other medicinal spices and herbs.

Palm sugar is often used to sweeten savoury food to balance out the salty flavour of fish. Its primary use in Thai cuisine is in sweets and desserts, and somewhat less often in curries and sauces.

take it from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_sugar