being obsessed with baking for several years, this is actually the first thai baked good i have ever tried to bake myself.

why?

living in thailand where these sweets and desserts can be found everywhere (well, obviously) and most of them already made to its perfection, it was hard to convince myself to try make one home. thai desserts, when made properly like using fresh instead of canned coconut milk, won't keep that long. so i thought, yeah, i'd just buy a portion of whatever i want to eat from the market and life would be a lot easier.

and baking cakes and cookies was much cooler and easier to do at home, and very often take a lot less time (as you will see all the things you have to do for this thai shortbread, it sure is more complicated to make than a normal shortbread or your favourite chocolate chips cookies!)

but i was wrong. about so many of those points mentioned above.

first, i'm not gonna live in thailand forever, at least now when i study abroad, all these thai favourites are not at all easy to find.

second, not all thai desserts and sweets require those 'fresh ingredients', like this shortbread, it's really easy and all the ingredients should already be in your kitchen, except for the 'fragrant candle' for smoking desserts which is actually not an ingredient, so you can buy it (about 1£ in Thailand) and use  it for many times. i'm even planning to bring one to the uk with me!

third, it makes me feel kinda bad not being able to make any thai desserts (let alone thai food...), especially when i'm abroad and talk constantly about food to everybody i meet but not being able to make a single authentic thai food for them.

and most importantly, now i think it's even cooler to be able to make thai desserts than baking cakes! so here a tiny step i took to approach the world of thai food. (how weird it is to say that considering that i'm thai)

kleeb lamduan is a name of thai flower (which looks just like this shortbread). the most special thing about this is the smell of it. after it is baked, the shortbread is smoked with thai fragrant candle for up to overnight (depending on the quality of the candle and the quantity of the shortbread you make, a batch of mine smells good after 1-2 hours) which adds a depth of flavour to this shortbread, makes it somewhat different from any other western baked goods you might be familiar with.

Kleeb Lamduan
makes about 18-20 tiny flowers

110 g. flour
25 g. icing sugar
30 g. grounded sesame seeds 
a pinch of salt (somewhere between 1/8-1/4 tsp)
4 tbsp oil (more or less)
fragrant/scented candle (Tian Ob)


sift together flour, sugar and salt. then add sesame and mix to combine

add oil one tablespoon at a time, it'll look similar to the process of making pie crust. mix the oil and flour lightly, keep adding more oil until the dough is held together but not too wet (oily)

form a 10 grams-ball, cut the ball into quarter, join three of the four pieces together as petals with a help of water so that the pieces won't fall apart. use the last piece to form a tiny ball and put it in the middle of the 'petals'

...and it'll take quite some times to do that to all the balls

bake your tiny flowers in a 175c preheated oven for 15 minutes. let the them cooled before putting them in a pot (or dutch oven, anything with a tight lid that does not made of plastic)

light the candle until there's a considering amount of smoke before blow the candle out and cover with a lit. let sit for at least 2 hours
here's also a video i made (with great effort of a one-and-a-half man team) which shows you all the process from start to finish, making it even easier to follow the this already simple recipe

by the way, head over and check out my friend paula's blog about her exchange year in thailand. she accompanied me during one of many kleeb lamduan session i did for this film. we had a lot of fun baking and already planed a very exciting video project—all i can say now is that it involves a lot of yummy food.

enjoy baking!