B

ali’s palm flower sugar, with its distinctive, smoked caramel and toffee flavors has been noticed by specialty food marketers.

A quick internet search has the palm sugar packaged, classified as organic and selling for US$40 for 14 ounces, quite a markup from the $2 a kilo in Bali’s palm sugar villages.

Back in Kawan Besar, the ancient custom of harvesting and making palm sugar has been handed from parents to children for as long as anyone can remember.

The sucrose rich palm sap is collected from the flower stem of the coconut palm. The flower is sliced off and the sap drains into a hollowed out coconut shell called a besuk.

“We place the flower inside the besuk and then seal it over with palm leaves. The besuk is then tied to the flower stem. If we don’t cover the besuk, bees will drink all the sap, leaving us with nothing but an empty container,” says gula merah farmer, Nyoman Sartr.

The besuk are collected and replaced morning and night, netting around 40 kilograms of sap.

This sweet sap is then cooked over wood fires for at least four hours, driving off water and reducing the sucrose sap into liquid sugar. Into half coconut shell moulds are placed old squares of banana leaf. The hot sugar is poured like toffee into the moulds where it cools and hardens, ready for market. And the flavors — think warm caramel fudge or afternoons at nana’s house cooking toffee — Bali’s gula merah is delicious.