These lovely colorful gems are one of my Thai favourite treats. They are called Ahloa (Ah Loa). Originate from Portugal but have been in Thai kitchen over many centuries. These cute little treats are available in any Traditional sweet store, school canteen, shopping malls and souvenir shops. We love munching on a handful of these beautiful natural scented sweets.
Ahloa is made with flour, sugar, coconut milk, natural food color extracts and the flower infused water. Though the ingredients and method of making sounds simple, but it produces such an impressive outcome with the thin crunchy crust coated the sticky chewy interior.
Ahloa is a charming treat because of its vibrant multicolor and the beautiful floral fragrances. Traditionally colors in Thai sweet derived from pure natural ingredients such as flowers, leaves, fruit skin, etc. The not only gives the color but assorted the fainted- scents to the dessert.
Ahloa (Thai Sweet Gems)
Ingredients (make about 1 1/2 cup)
2 cup flour
2 cup sugar
3 cup coconut milk (if used fresh coconut, use flower infused water for extraction)
Food color- See Natural food coloring post- green (from pandan leaves), pink (from dragon fruit skin), purple (from butterfly pea flowers), brown (from cocoa powder), yellow (night blooming jasmine), etc.
Preparation
- Dissolve sugar in coconut milk and keep aside.
- Sift the flour into the large mixing bowl then gradually add coconut milk mixture in and stir until there is no lump.
- Divide the batter into separate bowls if you want different colors. Add natural food colors as much as you like to get preferred color.
- Cook the batter one by one over the medium heat. Vigorously and continuously stir until the batter become transparent and very thick (almost like dough). Remove from the heat and keep aside. Repeat the process for other batches.
- When the cooked batter cool down, pile it into the piping bag with small nozzle.
- Squeeze small amount at the time into a clean nonstick baking tray.
- Dried in the hot sunlight for several hours until harden and crunchy from the outside. You can also bake them in low heat oven for 10-15 minutes or until find the same result.
- Store in airtight container upto 1 month.
These colorful mini cookies are very addictive. They are sweet, creamy, chewy and melting at the same time. My kid adores these dulcet confections. It is good to make in big batches because they can be store in room temperature for several days. They are cute and great for gifting your foodie neighbors and friends.
Have a lovely day,
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I love how colorful these are, especially since you used natural colors! They sound really tasty, too. I keep seeing people posting about coconut flour lately, so I wonder how that would be with these.
Jessica,
I think coconut flour might be too fragile for this recipe. Coconut flour is great for cookies and pudding though… I have few recipes for those. I will share it with you later 
These sweet doesn’t really require coconut flour. We use simple flour, sugar and coconut milk as the base
So pretty, they look like a party
Those are just so pretty. They would be pretty as cake decorations too, won’t they? My husband will probably like these as they have coconut milk.
I totally agree, it’s a great idea to throw them in some cake or dessert
beautiful colours. looks just fabulous!
I still can’t believe that those colors are natural (but I do). They’re so gorgeous. I love the idea of these coconut treats. Both of them. Thanks so much for sharing.
These look absolutely delicious and the colors are amazing. Great post and thanks for sharing it.
what great colors, i love they are natural!
The candies look great.
Just about to make these with my 9year old daughter. Will post outcome. Yours look fantastic
I saw your post just yesterday and made some with my 7 year old daughter today… The recipe is dead simple and fun to make with kids. I used powder sugar and plain food coloring (what I had on hand). Drying would have taken too long, therefore I baked the candy in a 200 degrees (Celsius) preheated oven for 8-10 minutes. Here is a pic of our outcome http://instagr.am/p/F4JnC/
I saw your post just yesterday and made some with my 7 year old daughter today… The recipe is dead simple and fun to make with kids. I used powder sugar and plain food coloring (what I had on hand). Drying would have taken too long, therefore I baked the candy in a 200 degrees (Celsius) preheated oven for 8-10 minutes. Here is a pic of our outcome http://instagr.am/p/F4JnC/
I’m glad you try this and have fun with it. I’ve seen the result, it looks very impressive. I hope your daughter enjoy these little treat, too
I tried these and the result was tasty, but mine didn’t become hard and crunchy. Do you have any idea why? It was still popular, I wrote all about it in http://leftoverrecipes.wordpress.com/2011/06/29/trying-out-thai-sweet-gems-from-tes-at-home/. Thanks for a great recipe!
These are so colorful and the shapes are so cute and beautiful! My fav Thai candy is the coconut with peanut toffees! The very first time I tried was many yrs back when my dad went to Thailand for holidays. From then on, whenever any of my relatives are going to Thailand, I’ll ask them to get 2 packets back for me!
I wanna try making these little cute sweeties too!
[...] put a bunch of recipes to try out later. One of them was Thai Sweet Gems. It looked easy and gorgeous. Also, I really liked the idea of the natural food coloring. I really [...]