How to Make Bua Loy, a Traditional Thai Dessert

Today MK Unigroup shares how to make bua loy (glutinous rice balls in coconut milk), a traditional Thai dessert that can be a little hard to find these days. If you'd like to make it yourself, let's see how easy or tricky it really is.

Bua loy is a traditional Thai dessert known throughout the country, with each region having its own recipe and tricks. It uses natural, locally available ingredients such as pandan leaves, sweet potato, rose or butterfly pea flowers, whose juice is mixed into the dough to give it beautiful colours. In the past, people made it as an offering at the temple and sold it alongside their regular local dishes, which helped boost their income. Today fewer people make bua loy at home because it is seen as fiddly and time-consuming, and it is easy to buy at the market.

Bua Loy: An Auspicious Dessert of Chewy Dough and Sweet Coconut Milk

Making bua loy with soft, chewy dough balls in coconut milk isn't difficult, because these days there are plenty of handy aids for both the ingredients and the process. That makes this auspicious dessert easy and fun to prepare, and an ideal activity for the whole family to do together.

Bua Loy Ingredients

For the Dough Balls

1. 2 cups glutinous rice flour
2. 1/2 cup sago flour
3. 1 cup cooked pumpkin
4. 1 cup cooked taro
5. Concentrated pandan juice
6. 1 cup steamed sweet potato
7. Tapioca starch
8. Water

For the Coconut Milk

1. 2 cups coconut milk
2. 100 g coconut sugar
3. 1 cup granulated sugar
4. 1 tsp fine salt
5. Chicken or duck eggs, young coconut flesh, white sesame seeds (optional)

How to Make the Bua Loy Dough Balls

1. Sift the glutinous rice flour and sago flour together, then divide the mixture into 4 portions, one for each colour you want.
2. Steam the sweet potato, taro and pumpkin until cooked.
3. Make concentrated pandan juice: cut pandan leaves into small pieces, add a little water, blend until fine and strain out the pulp.
4. Mash the steamed sweet potato until smooth, then gradually add the prepared flour and knead them together in a 2:1 ratio, e.g. about 1/2 cup of flour for 1 cup of sweet potato.
5. While kneading, if the dough feels dry, add water a little at a time until it reaches the right consistency.
6. Repeat the same process with the pumpkin and the taro.
7. Mix the last portion of flour with the concentrated pandan juice, pouring it in gradually and kneading until combined. If the dough feels dry, add water a little at a time until it is right.
8. Roll the dough into balls of equal size and dust them evenly with tapioca starch so they don't stick together. Keep the green dough separate, as it takes longer to cook than the other colours.
9. When all the dough is ready, bring a pot of water to the boil and add the taro, pumpkin and sweet potato balls. Keep stirring while it boils so the balls don't stick together; once they float to the surface, they are cooked.
10. Scoop out the floating balls with a strainer and drop them into cold water so they firm up and don't overcook.
11. Once all the coloured balls are cooked, boil the green balls the same way and repeat the remaining steps.

How to Make the Coconut Milk

1. Heat the coconut cream in a pot without letting it boil. Add the coconut flesh, if using, along with the sugar or prepared syrup.
2. When the coconut milk is hot, add the blanched bua loy balls, followed by the sweet poached eggs. Poach the eggs in syrup, not in the coconut milk, so the coconut milk stays white and pretty.
3. Leave the pot for a moment, turn off the heat and ladle into serving bowls. Done!

The dough takes a little longer to prepare, so if you are short on time you can cut down to just 1–2 colours, which saves a lot of time. Making bua loy yourself really isn't hard. If you enjoy articles like this, you'll find more on our website.