Processed
Coconut Palm Sugar Discs
A tier
Coconut palm sugar discs are boiled coconut-blossom sap poured into coin- or cupcake-sized rounds that harden enough to stack. They are drier than a Thai paste tub and more rustic than granulated coconut sugar. Southeast Asian pantries grate them into sauces and syrups. Flavour is caramel-coconut, not molasses-cane. A disc that tastes only of burnt sugar was overcooked. Soak or grate; do not throw a whole disc into a thin dressing and hope. These discs overlap the coconut-sugar primary in origin but sit here as a palm-sugar shape and style. Keep them airtight or they weep and then set into one mass.
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Characteristics
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History
Coconut-sap sugars were poured into discs for market stacks across the archipelago.
Export discs of coconut palm sugar reached Chinese and Southeast Asian groceries worldwide.
Western cooks met coconut sugar first as these brown coins, later as granules.
Discs remained the traditional shape beside the newer granulated coconut-sugar bag.