Vegetable fat (palm) is fat from the fleshy fruit of the oil palm, Elaeis guineensis. Crude palm oil is semi-solid in a warm room. By cooling it and separating the parts, refiners split it into a liquid fraction, palm olein, used mainly for frying, and a harder fraction, palm stearin, then blend these into fats of exactly the firmness they need. Palm kernel oil, pressed from the seed, is a different fat.
Palm fat is widely used because it is firm at room temperature without hydrogenation, resists going rancid and has a neutral taste. On the Tivoli Knots biscuit sticks, such as Chocolate biscuit with coated chocolate cream Tivoli Knots Brand, it is listed right after sugar and is typically what gives the flavoured cream coating its body and snap.
Palm oil production has been linked to deforestation, and certification schemes such as RSPO exist for sustainably produced palm oil; whether a product uses certified palm is known only if the pack says so. Palm fat is not an allergen.
