Coconut sugar comes from a natural source, the sap of the coconut palm. This sap circulates through the tree in a similar way to maple syrup.

To harvest coconut palm sap, farmers cut into the flower bud stem of the tree to allow the nectar to flow out. To make coconut flower nectar, they then mix the sap with water and boil it down to a syrup.

Producers make granulated coconut sugar by leaving the nectar to dry and crystallize. They then break the dried chunks apart to create the granules most people recognize.

Coconut sugar has a similar look and feels to unprocessed raw sugar, but it may have more natural variants, such as light or dark granules or fluctuations in granule size.