What is Muscovado?

Muscovado is either unrefined or partially refined cane sugar. Like brown sugar, it has a deep molasses taste, but has a greater complexity and likens closer to a savory toffee. Having been produced in the West Indies, India, and Colombia, muscovado is also known as Barbados sugar, khansari, and khand. Unlike the white sugar, muscovado is often found being used in more savory dishes to add depth or complexity.

Chemically speaking, the grains of muscovado are coarser than those of white sugar and have a higher moisture content, due to the molasses not being removed in the refinement process. Muscovado is also higher in nutrients than white sugar, due to being minimally clarified during the cane juice evaporation process.

Muscovado and Rum??

When I was first creating this recipe while chasing an unreachable Samoa cookie high, I was incredibly surprised that my entire kitchen came to smell like coconut rum during the syrup process. Naturally, I looked up the history of rum and muscovado after realizing that traditional rums tended to originate in the same places that historically had high sugar cane exports.

It turns out that rum is a liquor by fermenting and distilling either sugarcane juice or sugar cane molasses. The first recorded rum is seen around 1650 in the West Indies, in Barbados. The name “rum” came from the word “rumbullion,” which was a slang given to the drink meaning “kill-devil.” Further cementing the relation between rum and sugarcane, references to the drink pre-name were made using the term “wine sugar.”

Obviously, many of the people of that area growing that sugar have roots in some of the greatest historical shame we know, which is the slave trade. Rum became a huge economic tool that helped feed the need for excess sugarcane, which of course led to more forced labour and a greater demand for the slave trade as a whole in that region. Molasses itself became a currency for which enslaved people were exchanged, and that molasses went on to became the rum that was consumed by many colonizers and the consumers they serviced.

What Are Simple Syrups?

Simple Syrups are one of the things we use all the time but tend not to notice. Basically, it’s liquid flavor. It’s a sugar/water mixture that takes on the flavor of whatever you add to it by reducing it down from a water/sugar mixture to a syrup. It’s incredibly diverse in how you can use it, and has actually been in use since the oldest known cocktail in the 1806.

What are they used for?

• Cocktails / mixing drinks

• Almost any coffee drink that isn’t black coffee

• Flavoring & moistening sponge cakes

• Iced teas

• Ice cream flavoring

• Enhancing sliced fruit

Shelf Stable vs Not Shelf Stable

Sugar is a natural chemical stabilizer that in this case acts as a preservative for the simple syrup. This just means that you won’t have to refrigerate it if you decide to go the shelf stable route. The rule of thumb is a Shelf Stable syrup is 2 Parts Sugar : 1 Part Water.

It’s more sugary, but it takes on more or the flavour that you’re trying to infuse. This option is great if you have limited fridge space, but I’d be careful with how much of it you’re adding to your coffee, cakes, etc because of the added sweetness. It’s all about finding the right balance!

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