Gula melaka substitutes

The most accurate substitution, because coconut sugar is literally the same sap in granulated form.

Best for

gula melaka syrup for sago and cendol, kuih and steamed cakes, onde-onde filling, coconut caramel and sauces

Coconut sugar on its own is honestly good but disappointingly pale and mild, because it is boiled down less far and is often lighter in colour. The molasses puts back the darkness and most of the depth. What you still will not quite get is the specific smoky note gula melaka picks up from being reduced over a wood fire, which is subtle in a cake and obvious in a plain syrup. Melt the mixture with a splash of water rather than dry, and taste before adding more molasses, since it goes bitter quickly.

The same family of product, just softer and usually lighter.

Best for

kuih and Southeast Asian desserts, syrups, savoury dishes like rendang and sambal, sweet soy glazes

These come as soft, crumbly pucks that you can dent with a thumbnail, unlike the rock-hard gula melaka cylinder. Javanese gula jawa is the closest of them and does have some smokiness; Thai palm sugar tends to be paler, creamier and considerably milder, and in a syrup it tastes almost butterscotch-like rather than smoky. Because they are softer they measure and melt more easily, which is a practical advantage. If the disc you have is very pale, add a teaspoon of molasses per cup.

The best thing you can buy in an ordinary supermarket, and closer than plain brown sugar.

Best for

cakes, cookies and puddings, gula melaka syrup at a push, sticky glazes, savoury braises

Muscovado is genuinely unrefined, moist and heavily molasses-y, so it gives you the right colour and a real depth of flavour rather than a hint of it. The difference is the character of that depth: muscovado is molasses-bitter and slightly mineral, where gula melaka is smoky and rounder with a coconut edge. A syrup made from muscovado tastes like British black treacle rather than a Malaysian dessert, which is why the pandan leaf matters so much here. In a batter, nobody will complain.

Also an unrefined block sugar, but usually made from sugarcane rather than palm.

Best for

cakes and puddings, syrups, savoury dishes, sweet coconut fillings

Cane jaggery is dark, hard, sold in blocks and grated the same way, so the handling is identical. The flavour goes in a different direction: grassier, more mineral, with a faint sour or tangy edge that gula melaka does not have. Palm jaggery, if you can find it, is much closer and is essentially the Indian equivalent of the same product. Cane jaggery in a sago gula melaka syrup tastes a little sharp and green; in a spiced cake it is excellent.

The last-resort version, fine in a batter and thin in a syrup.

Best for

cakes and cookies, sweetening a batter or a drink, glazes

Dark brown sugar is refined white sugar with molasses added back, so it is sweeter, cleaner and much less complex than gula melaka, and the maple is there to add a little aromatic depth. In a spiced cake or a cookie this works well and nobody will notice. Poured as a syrup over sago pudding, it tastes flat and simply sweet, and the absence of any smoky or fermented note is very obvious. Use this in bakes, not in desserts where the sugar is the flavour.

Not a different sugar, but the technique that makes a substitute taste right.

Best for

sago gula melaka, cendol, pouring over ice cream or steamed puddings, kuih syrups

Simmer the sugar, water and knotted pandan leaf together for three or four minutes until the sugar has dissolved and the syrup coats a spoon, then fish out the leaf and add a good pinch of salt. The pandan is doing far more work than people expect: it contributes the grassy, vanilla-like aroma that most of us actually associate with gula melaka desserts, and without it even real gula melaka syrup tastes surprisingly plain. If you have no fresh pandan, a quarter teaspoon of pandan extract added off the heat does the job.