Bua Loy Khi Wan, Thai Dessert Recipe | Coconut Milk Pudding

Bua Loi or Bua Loy is a beloved, colorful Thai coconut milk pudding dessert enjoyed throughout all of Thailand. You can find it both in high-end fancy restaurants and street food stalls alike. It has its different versions: some have pumpkin, some have taro, and now we have introduced our avocado, strawberry, turmeric version of this wonderful Thai dessert recipe.

Not only does Thai cuisine give us some of the most flavorful coconut soups in the world, they also have a bunch of wonderful coconut milk dessert recipes as well. Bua Loy translates to “floating lotus.” And the floating lotuses in this dessert we have here are balls of glutinous rice mixed with turmeric, avocado, strawberry and egg yolk. Combined with fresh, sweet coconut milk, this is a treat that’s hard not to love.

Bua Loi Recipe

Ours is basically the same as you’ll find here in Thailand, except a bit more keto friendly. With the avocado and coconut milk, this Bua Loy is actually a Bua Loy Fat Bomb!

• we use honey instead of sugar in traditional Thai dessert recipe
• we use avocado balls to make it even more healthy, fatty and keto worthy

We leave out the sugar, and instead opt for a healthier (albeit not low carb), honey. For extra low carb greatness, you can use salt with stevia leaves to sweeten the coconut milk over the stove instead of salt and honey. However, with the small amount of honey used here, it’s still a low carb high fat ketogenic diet worthy recipe if you’re in search of some good keto desserts.

Diet Considerations: Paleo, Keto, Gluten-Free

• Keto Diet: Yes, it’s a good keto dessert recipe.
• Paleo Diet: Grains are the big NO with Paleo diets. And white rice is techinically a form of grain. However, many still consider white rice suitable to a Paleo diet. This recipe is a fringe Paleo dessert recipe.
• Gluten-Free Diet: Yes, this is a gluten-free dessert recipe – more on that below.

Is glutinous rice flour gluten-free? Yes

While the name implies it full of gluten, glutinous rice actually IS gluten-free.

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Glutinous rice flour and sweet rice flour are actually the same thing. They’re both gluten free. Sweet rice flour comes from glutinous rice flour. According to TheKitchn,

…the fact that it’s called glutinous rice does not mean that it contains gluten. Rather, this rice has a much higher starch content than other kinds of rice, making it an extremely efficient thickening agent for sauces or binder for things like mochi and noodles.

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Bua Loy Recipe Ingredients

• Coconut Milk (Aroy-D or fresh pressed)
• Glutinous Rice Flour
• Pandan Leaf (optional)
• Strawberries
• Avocado
• Turmeric
• Eggs
• Salt
• Honey

Bua Loy Cooking Directions:

Here we’ll go over this recipe step by step by step so you can see exactly how it’s done. It looks quite involved and time-consuming, but other than the fact that it’s a little messy, it’s actually a semi-fast and very easy Thai dessert recipe. There are so many images that instead of cramming them all one by one I combined them to their related actions, so you can really see every step of the creation of this Bua Loy dessert.

Step 1. Coconut Milk & Breading Prep

At this step, heat up the coconut milk on the stovetop and if you have pandan leaf, tie a big strand into a knot and drop it in the coconut milk heating up.

Next, you will create the turmeric, strawberry and avocado balls.

First, you need to mash them and roll them into large balls, about the size of a baseball.

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Step 2. Make Big Bua Loi Balls

Turmeric Flour Ball

This turmeric one is mostly going to be water and flour. The turmeric added into the mix gives it a yellow color and when this recipe is finished, you do taste the turmeric a bit. It’s more than just a coloring. You can get as generous as you need with the turmeric powder here.

Just kneed it for a while and then work it into a ball in the palm of your hand. If you find it too sticky, add some more glutinous rice flour in its bowl and on your hands, until it looks like this:

The same process will be done for all.

The strawberry is easy.

The avocado is the most finicky.

Strawberry Flour Ball

The strawberry and the egg yolks are my favorite tasting ingredients once this is finished.

However, the avocado and turmeric balls are delightful as well.

Here is what the avocado process will look like:

Avocado Flour Ball

At this point you should have THREE large flour balls:

1. Turmeric
2. Strawberry
3. Avocado

Next, you will make these larger balls into very small ones…

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Step 3. Roll Into Little Bua Loy Balls

First, sprinkle the glutinous rice flour all over a large cutting board.

Tip: Cover your hands with the rice flour to ensure the ingredients don’t stick to your skin.

From there, start with whichever one you want, and start rolling out these small bua loi balls.

You need to pull a piece off the big flour ball, and roll it inside your palm. The picture above hopefully shares this form of rolling so you can see how it’s done. We didn’t take video, but we can update this with video of the process if anyone requests it.

Final result of this step:

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Step 4. Cook Bua Loy Balls In Hot Water

Next, dump the small rolled balls into a saucepan filled with barely boiling hot water over the stove.

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Step 5. Cool Down Before Final Steps

Before putting the cooked balls into the coconut milk, you need to drain them from the saucepan of hot water and then put them inside a bowl of cool water.

Next, drain (or is the correct term, strain?) the hot water out..

Then place them in a bowl of cool water, like so:

While they are cooling down…

Add in the salt, the honey and then the coconut balls into the heated coconut milk, like so.

Once you’ve added the salt and honey, plop the bua loy balls gently into the coconut milk.

NOTE: Just as a reminder, that pandan leaf you see inside the coconut milk is a local plant here that is easy to attain. It adds a nice unique flavor to the milk and the final result. However, if you don’t have access to pandan leaf, it’s ok. Not all Bua Loy recipes use this leaf. It’s nice if you can find it though!

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Step 6. Add Egg Yolks & Whites (final step)

You want to include both the egg whites and the yolk, whole.

If you break the yolk on accident, that’s fine, just add in an extra that’s not broken because you need them to stay intact to enjoy this recipe as it should be.

And that’s pretty much it!

At this point, you can let the whole eggs cook for a bit. When they’ve hardened up to your liking, the recipe is complete.

Serve and enjoy…

Bua Loi is a wonderful dessert that is enjoyed all year long.

In fact, if you have ever watched the episode where the late Anthony Bourdain (RIP) goes to Chiang Mai, Thailand and eats at the cowboy hat lady’s booth, about 100 feet to her right is a Thai street food vendor that makes this Bua Loy.

This night vendor man’s Bua Loy doesn’t use avocado, turmeric or strawberries like ours. His is more traditional in that it uses sweetened pumpkin, lots of sugar and straight glutinous rice flour balls. It’s very delicious and when I’m wanting to treat myself I pick this one up because I drive by it so often. You know, I will actually update this post in the future with a little video where I’ll go buy some from him so you can see what I’m talking about! He’s only open in the evenings.

The strike-a-pose shot of this Thai dessert recipe

Did you make this recipe?

Tag @nutritionadventures on Instagram and hashtag it #nutritionadventures

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Up Next: Thai Green Curry – A Keto Green Curry

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