Sweeter Than Sweet

Thai Desserts
One thing I have noticed in both Thailand and Rwanda is their love and obsession with sugar.  In Rwanda they put more sugar in their tea that water, and despite the poverty and malnutrition would buy fanta sodas instead of avocados or milk.  In Thailand lots of "regular food" s sweenteded here.  The bread, mayonaise, coffee, and even every thai meal has a ton of sugar added.  They pour sweetened condensed milk on things already sweet such of smoothies and pancakes.  They do have interesting desserts.  Here are 5 common ones that are either served at my school or I see in the markets of Surin.  


Khanon Chan (Layered Dessert)
They serve this for dessert as school alot.  It took me a while but this dessert has grown on me.  It has nine Layers and represents prosperity in life and promotion in you occupation.  It smells weird, is sweet and oily, smooth and sticky.  The ingredients are flour (rice flour, tapioca flour and arrowroot flour), sugar, coconut milk, and pandanus leaves (a common plant throughout southeast asia)

                      Khanom Thian (Coconut Sticky Rice)

This is my favorite dessert served at the school and around town.  Northeastern Thailand is famous for its sticky rice.  There is also banana sticky rice which I hate mostly because of the mushy banana part.  These sticky rice desserts are wrapped in banana leaves.  

Klouy Buaod Chee (Bananas In Coconut Milk)

 

This is a Thai dessert that we made in Kindergarten class one day when teaching about bananas.  It is literally just coconut milk, boiled with sugar, salt, and bananas.  It’s very easy to make but only taste good while hot and fresh. 

Kanom Krok (Coconut-Rice Pancakes)

This dessert I tried in my first few weeks in Thailand but I did not care for it and still do not.  I don’t like coconut and this is very sweet and has a lot of coconut.  It’s basically coconut, flour and rice fried on a special type of pan with individual circles.  

Roti (Thai Street Pancakes)

Thai pancakes are very thin.  A small ball of dough is rolled out as thin as possible and fried in an inch of grease.  You are able to choose you ingredients, egg/cheese, banana/Nutella or peanut butter.  For the sweet pancakes they top it off with sweetened condensed milk and slice it into bit sized squares to eat on the go. They are delicious but how couldn’t they be its 90% sugar and grease.