Panela can be used as a sugar alternative in all recipes:
 Desserts, cakes, as syrup (for example, barbecue sauce)
Tea, coffee, natural juices, curd and yogurt,
In cocktails: eg. Caipirinha
In home medicine: as a cold drink - Aguadepanela
(Panela dissolved in hot water) with some freshly-squeezed lemon juice.
 
To produce the panela, the sugar cane juice is cooked at high temperatures until it forms a rather dense molasses, then passed into prism-shaped molds where it is left to dry until solidified or curdled.