A New Year toast

To mark the end of one arbitrarily labelled set of 365 days and the beginning of another, let’s celebrate sweetness. Traditionally, Homo sapiens would peddle a form of penance to intensify the passing of a year. But that’s an awful lot to ask of your liver after the festive frolics. Plus, I come from a different planet. So I vote for French toast and coconut-sugar bombs.

Coconut sugar is not just another hipsteria colonising Ireland’s fashionable cafes. This curious brown sugar actually makes sense.

For a start, coconut sugar has a modest mineral content, which helps explain why health nuts go cross-eyed and slack-jawed for it.

Then there’s the taste. Even though it comes from the coconut tree, it is definitely not coconutty.

Think crunchy caramel crumbs without that sicklysweet kick of regular sugar. It won’t make your heart beat like a voodoo drum, either.

Coconut sugar comes from the nectar of the coconut palm tree. The flower’s sticky sap is collected and boiled down to a sweet syrup.

To make a crystallised sugar, the syrup is boiled for longer and left to cool, before it is ground into granules.

This cinnamon coconut sugar is unlike any other sweetener I have tasted. It’s smooth like maple, yet delectably crunchy, with a warm and satisfying smack. It might just be the most exciting thing your porridge will meet in 2019.