Piloncillo
Sweetener
Top 10 pairings
Piloncillo is Mexico's traditional unrefined cane sugar, sold as hard, truncated cones of solidified boiled sugarcane juice. A member of the panela/rapadura family of non-centrifugal cane sugars, it keeps the molasses that refining strips away, giving it a deep amber-to-mahogany colour and a rounded caramel-and-molasses sweetness. It is the sweetener at the heart of café de olla, mole, champurrado and countless Mexican dulces.
Picking a good onedrag
Rock-hard, sharp-edged, drySoft, weeping, fuzzed
Dry and a little rubbedEveryday bestThe working cone - melted to miel de piloncillo for buñuelos and capirotada, or stirred through atole and candied camote.
The cone and its colourA shade deeper, or colour patchy from cone to cone, still dry to look at and only rubbed at the edges
Heft and the chopHard but crumblier, breaking rather than shattering, the grater throwing a slightly damp-looking crumb
The wrapper and the labelBought loose from a market bin, dry to the touch, taken home into a jar or bag whose lid actually shuts