Desserts

Thai desserts lean on a few ingredients used with great skill: coconut milk and cream, palm sugar, sticky rice, pandan leaves and fresh tropical fruit. The best are lightly sweet and noticeably salted, which makes the fruit and coconut taste richer.

Mango sticky rice is the most famous of them all and appears on every street corner in the hot season, when Nam Dok Mai mangoes are at their best. Its method, steaming soaked glutinous rice and then soaking it in sweetened, salted coconut milk, is the basis of many other Thai sweets.

Alongside the recipes, the fruit guides on this site cover the mangoes, coconuts, bananas, pandan and other ingredients that Thai desserts are built from, with advice on choosing them ripe and finding them outside Thailand.

Most of these desserts are simple once you understand two techniques: cooking with coconut cream so it stays smooth, and seasoning sweet things with a pinch of salt. Many keep for a day or two and are served at room temperature, which makes them easy to prepare ahead.