This is a typical handmade sweet (Kanom), with a texture similar to turkish delight and a rose scent. If you cannot obtain rose water, it is possible to use vanilla essence in water, or lemon or orange juice, making different types of sweet, but the authentic flavour is rose water.

Ingredients for Family
500 gms Cassava Root
300 gms Sugar
100 ml Rose Water
100 gms Desiccated Coconut.

Preparation
1. Peel the cassava leaving only the white flesh.
2. Grate the cassava flesh until finely shredded.
3. Mix the water with the sugar and cassava then blend it in a food processor.
4. Divide into portions for steaming, wrap each portion in aluminium foil to form parcels. You will cut these portions into smaller cubes later.
5. Steam the parcels for 25 minutes.
6. Leave to cool in the fridge.
7. Remove the foil, cut the cassava sweets into bite sized pieces.
8. Dust with the shredded coconut.

The filling for these sweets is green soya beans boiled with sugar. The outer pastry is made with pork fat oil for extra flavour (you can use vegetable oil if you don't fancy pork oil in a sweet!). To make pork fat oil (pork lard), take pork with plenty of fat, chop it finely and fry it slowly to release as much oil as possible.
The pastry is made by rolling out 2 layers of pastry, one layer has plenty of the oil in it, the other layer is dryer. When combined and rolled out they form tiny layers that make the pastry more delicate. Below you can see the two pastry doughs waiting to be rolled up.

Ingredients for 1st Pastry Layer
100 gms Wheat Flour
3 Tablespoons Pork Lard
1/2 Teaspoon Salt
1/2 Teaspoon Sugar
30 ml Cool Water

Ingredients for 2nd Pastry Layer
50 gms Wheat Flour
2 1/2 Tablespoons Pork Oil
5 Tablespoons Cool Water

Ingredients for Filling
100 gms Soya Bean
100 gms Sugar
4 Tablespoons Oil

Ingredients for Glazing
1 Egg Yolk
1 Tablespoon water

Preparation of Filling
1. Soak the soya beans in warm water for 6-8 hour. Then steam them for 15 minutes.
2. Put the beans into a blender and blend until fine. Add the sugar and continue blending until it's all well mixed. You can also pulp them in a Thai mortar but it takes a bit more work.
3. Transfer the blended beans & sugar into a saucepan and heat them over a low heat. Stir them until they thicken to a paste, then leave to cool.
4. This is your filling.

Preparation of Pastry
1. Start by preparing the first layer of pastry.
2. Mix the flour, pork oil, salt and sugar and some of the cold water to form a dough. Only add just enough water to form the dough.
3. Knead it until it is smooth.
4. Cut it into 10 equal pieces.
5. Now the second layer of pastry.
6. Mix the flour, pork oil and some of the water to form a dough. As before you only want to add enough water to make the dough.
7. Cut that dough into 10 equal pieces too.

8. Take a ball of the 1st pastry and roll it into a disc.
9. Place a ball of the 2nd pastry in the middle, see the photograph for examples of what it should look like.
10. Fold up the edges into a ball.
11. Roll the ball into a flat long strip.
12. Roll up the strip, turn it through 90 degrees and roll it to a flat strip again.
13. Roll it up again.
14. Cut into 3 equal pieces. At the end you should have 30 small balls of pastry.

Final Preparation & Glazing
1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius.
2. Oil a baking tray-
3. Roll the small pastry balls into circular discs.
4. Add a spoonful of the soya filling.
5. Fold up the edges and tuck them underneath, as you place them on the baking tray.
6. Mix the egg yolk with a tablespoon water and glaze the top of the sweets with it.
7. Bake for 30 minutes until they just start to go brown.
8. Phew! You've finished.

These are Thai sweets, so they're not what you might expect. Made from sweetened soya beans, then dipped in egg yolk and cooked in hot sugar syrup. You can also use yellow soya for a totally yellow 'candy', but I prefer to use soaked green bean soya, I think it has more fibre.

Ingredients for 4 People
100 gms Green Soya Beans
300 ml Warm Water
500 gms Sugar (100gms + 400gms)
5 Egg Yolks

Preparation
1. Soak the green soya beans in warm water for at least 10 hours (overnight is best). They will become soft.
2. Steam for 15 minutes to cook them.
3. Grind it in a food blender, or in a Thai mortar to a paste.
4. Put the paste into a saucepan, add 100gms (keep 400gms back!) of the sugar into the same pan and cook over a low heat until the mixture thickens, stirring all the time. Once it thicken after a few minutes, leave it to cool.
5. Roll pieces of the soya paste in your hands to form small sausages 4cms long.
6. Boil the remaining 400gms of sugar in a saucepan with just enough water to dissolve it all, this is to form a hot sugar syrup.
7. Whip the egg yolks together.
8. Take the soya sausages, dip them in the egg yolk until they're well covered with egg, then drop them into the simmering hot sugar syrup to cook.
9. The egg will cook giving them a yellow sweet glaze, remove them after 3 minutes or so, and place on a serving dish.
10. They can be eaten warm or cold.

Another Thai 'candy' that's more like a snack than a sweet. This one is made with a pureé of yellow soya bean and sugar. When I was a child I would spend my money on these sweets whenever I could. When you buy these in Thailand they have a pretty pattern stamped into the top, but you can also make them the same way I do, in an ice-cube tray. You will need either yellow soya beans for this, or green soya beans. If you have green soya beans, soak them in warm water overnight and peel them in the morning.

Ingredients
100 gms Green Soya Beans
500 ml Warm Water
300 gms Sugar
300 ml Coconut Milk
50 gms Grated Coconut

Preparation
1. Soak the soya beans in warm water overnight.
2. Remove the green skins from the soya (you can simply squeeze them between your fingers to do this) then steam for 15 minutes.
3. In a blender, take the soya beans, add the sugar and coconut and blend until smooth.
4. Place it in a saucepan and cook over a low heat until it becomes very thick.
5. Form into cubes, leave to cool in the fridge and they're ready to eat. I use a ice-cube tray dusted with icing sugar for mine.

Baked cookies are common in cities, but not so common in the countryside in Thailand. Out in the villages we tend to cook with gas, wood or charcoal on stoves, rather than ovens and baked food is not very convienient to make.

Ingredients
200 ml Coconut Milk
150 ml Evaporated Milk
100 gms Sugar
3 Eggs
60 gms Wheat Flour
50 gms Butter
1 Teaspoons Salt
1-2 Drops Vanilla

Preparation
1. Whip the eggs, add the coconut milk, sugar, salt, evaporated milk, vanilla and wheat flour into the eggs. Whip it together for another minute.
2. Put a saucepan on the hear, put the butter in, wait for the butter to dissolve then mix all the ingredients in and stir until a thick paste is formed. Leave to cool.
3. Preheat the oven to 200 degrees Celsius.
4. Fill a piping bag with the paste and pipe out the mixture into cookie shapes onto a baking sheet or tin foil.
5. Bake for 20 minutes, or until they're brown.

Serve With
Hot Tea
Hot Coffee

These are Thai style doughnuts, they are slightly salty and eaten with hot sweet cocoa or chocolate for breakfast. I like to dip them in the chocolate and let them soak a little.

Ingredients
120 gms Wheat Flour ( Cake Flour )
2 Teaspoons Yeast
1/2 Teaspoon Salt
1 Teaspoon Sugar
1/8 Teaspoon Baking Soda
110 ml Water
Oil for Deep Frying

Preparation
1. Mix the flour, salt, sugar, yeast, and baking soda together and leave for 5 minutes.
2. Add the water and knead it to a smooth dough. This takes about 15 minutes of kneading. If the dough is too soft, add a little more flour.
3. Leave it in a bowl, covered with a damp cloth of 1-2 hours to rise.
4. Roll the dough into a long sausage and flatten it into a flat strip about 5 cms wide.
5. Cut 'H' shapes from this strip of dough (you cut rectangular pieces off the strip and put two short cuts that don't quite meet in the middle, as shown below.
6. Heat the oil to 180 degrees celsius (medium hot) and fry the doughnuts until they are golden brown.

Serve With
Hot Coffee
Hot Chocolate

For these cookies, use wheat flour intended for confectionary and cake use to create the find crumb texture, in Thailand we use bleached flour to make the biscuits whiter too.

Ingredients
140 gms Wheat flour
100 gms Butter
40 gms Oil
120 gms Caster Sugar (Or blend Granulated to make the grains finer)
2 gms Bicarbonate of Soda
Cashew Nuts
Egg Yolk

Preparation
1. Mix the bicarbonate and wheat flour together.
2. Blend the butter, sugar and oil together, add the flour and blend to a fine crumb.
3. Grease a baking tray.
4. Press the mixture to form pastry. Press into cutter moulds, I used a round and a star shaped cutter and pressed the mixture into them.
5. Add a cashew to each biscuit.
6. Whisk the egg yolk and brush the tops of the biscuits with the yolk.
7. Bake at 180 degrees celsius until cooked (approximately 15-20 minutes).

As promised the savoury yellow soy version of this Japanese snack, made with the salted yellow beans and salty egg yolks. Snacks like this are easy and simple to eat, and so are good for picnics, and lunch boxes.

Ingredients
120 gms Wheat flour
175 ml Condensed Milk
2 Tablespoon Fresh Butter
1/4 Teaaspoon Baking Soda
Drop of Vanilla Essence
100 gms Yellow Bean ( Soak Overnight )
125 Coconut Milk
1 Teaspoon Salt
50 gms Ground (Desiccated) Coconut
1 Salty Egg Yolk

Preparation
1. Mix the flour and baking soda, add the butter and a little water. Mix and knead until the flour forms a dough.
2. Add the condensed milk, vanilla essence and continue mixing/kneading.
3. Leave the dough to rest for 5-10 minutes.
4. For the filling, steam the yellow beans for 15-20 minutes, I place them on foil and steam the foil parcel to do this.
5. Into a blender, blend the yellow beans and salt, add the coconut milk and ground coconut and blend a little more to mix them in.
6. Place this filling into a saucepan, and warm over a low heat, stirring continously until the mixture thickens and dries out.
7. Add the salty egg yolk, stir it into the mixture.
8. Leave to cool.
9. Now to assemble the snack, take the flour dough and roll it flat and thin. Cut round circles 5-7 cms diameter from the pastry.
10. Take a lump of the filling, place it in the centre of each circle and fold up the edges and crimp the top.
11. Place them on a greased baking sheet and bake at 180 degrees Celsius for 10 minutes.