Khanom Kluay (ขนมกล้วย)

A Fudge, Not A Cake

The name is the whole recipe: ขนม — a sweet or snack — and กล้วย, banana. No eggs, no butter, no raising agent, no oven. Ripe nam wa bananas (กล้วยน้ำว้า), rice flour, tapioca starch, sugar and coconut cream are kneaded into a thick batter, spooned into little banana-leaf cups or clay thai ramekins (ถ้วยตะไล) and steamed. What comes out is less like a sponge and more like a dense banana fudge — set, slightly chewy, scented with coconut. The wordplay is deliberate: in Thai, เรื่องกล้วย ๆ means an easy matter, and this is the easy sweet — the one you make when a whole hand of bananas has ripened past the point of eating.

The traditional banana matters. Thai sources specify กล้วยน้ำว้า — the nam wa banana, the common Thai cooking banana — and Aroifin's recipe page notes why it deserves the spot: nam wa bananas are rich in vitamin A, B1, B2 and niacin, and Thai traditional medicine treats the ripe fruit as a remedy for sore throats and constipation. The same page adds the caution that comes with the coconut cream: fine in moderation, but it is saturated fat, so nobody eats khanom kluay by the tray.

At the market, the sweet rarely appears alone. Aroifin notes that khanom kluay is usually sold side by side with khanom fak thong (ขนมฟักทอง), its pumpkin twin made the same way. The pair — one golden-brown, one orange — are the classic Thai market-stall sweets, and TrueID's version pitches khanom kluay the way the vendors see it: cheap ingredients, easy method, reliable profit, a legitimate career for home cooks selling at local markets.

Krua.co's recipe adds the traditionalist's detail. Its coconut cream is not poured from a tin but pressed from 500 g of grated coconut and a cup of warm water, and the whole batch can be steamed as one 7-inch square tray, cooled and cut into 2 × 2-inch pieces — the version you still find at old-school sweet shops, alongside the cups and banana-leaf wraps.

The Recipe (cup version, from Wongnai and Aroifin)

Arrowroot version (TrueID, Krua.co): add 1 tbsp arrowroot starch (แป้งท้าวยายม่อม) to the flours for extra bounce. Young coconut version (TrueID): use very ripe bananas, add 300 g young coconut meat (เนื้อมะพร้าวอ่อน) to the batter, and steam 30–40 minutes. Square-tray version (Krua.co): steam the whole batch in a greased 7-inch square tray for 20–25 minutes, cool, cut into 2 × 2-inch pieces.

The Method

1. The bananas. Peel them and mash in a large bowl until fairly smooth. Every source agrees the bananas must be ripe; most push further and want them very ripe — black-peel ripe — because that is where the sweetness is.
2. The flours. Add the rice flour, tapioca starch, sugar and salt, then pour in the thick coconut cream. Knead by hand until everything becomes one mass. Krua.co kneads the flour with a little of the cream for 10–15 minutes before adding the rest; aroifin simply notes that longer kneading makes the finished cake chewier.
3. The coconut. Fold in 1¾ cups of the grated coconut so it runs evenly through the mixture. Keep the last ¼ cup for the top.
4. The cups. Spoon the mixture into banana-leaf cups (กระทงใบตอง) or Thai ramekins (ถ้วยตะไล) — small and shallow, so the steam reaches the middle. Sprinkle the reserved coconut over each one.
5. The steam. Set the cups over boiling water, cover and steam about 30 minutes — around 20 for small shallow cups — until the cakes are set and firm to the touch. Wongnai and Aroifin steam on a full rolling boil; TrueID prefers a medium flame for a steadier steam.
6. The finish. Lift the cakes out and serve warm or at room temperature. Steamed in a tray, the batch is cooled and cut into squares. Leftovers keep in the fridge and re-steam beautifully.

Where Thai Sources Disagree

How Western Versions Get It Wrong

• Baking it like a sponge. No eggs, butter, raising agent or oven is involved. Western versions that bake a banana-cake batter with vanilla and cinnamon have made a different, pleasant thing — but it is not khanom kluay, which is steamed, dense and fudgy. "Cake" is a courtesy translation.
• Desiccated coconut. Dried, shredded coconut soaks up the moisture in the batter and leaves the cake dry and tough. Thai recipes use fresh grated coconut meat — frozen works — or tinned young coconut for the luxury version.
• Glutinous rice flour. The flour is ordinary fine-milled rice flour, not glutinous. The two are not interchangeable: glutinous flour turns the cake into a sticky, mochi-like mass instead of a firm, sliceable sweet.
• Under-ripe fruit. A supermarket banana that is merely yellow has none of the sugar or aroma the recipe relies on — the sweetness comes almost entirely from the fruit. Let them go fully ripe, ideally to a speckled or dark skin, before mashing.
• Treating it as a centrepiece dessert. Khanom kluay is a market-stall snack, spooned into palm-sized cups and sold two for pennies, not a layered gateau to be iced and served at celebrations. That modesty is the recipe.

UK Ingredient Notes

• Nam wa bananas (กล้วยน้ำว้า): sold at Thai and Asian grocers when in season; otherwise use very ripe supermarket bananas, the riper the better.
• Rice flour: use fine-milled Thai rice flour from an Asian grocer — not glutinous rice flour.
• Tapioca starch: at any large supermarket or Asian grocer; arrowroot starch for the chewier version.
• Coconut cream: the thick part of a good tinned coconut milk, or press your own from fresh grated coconut and warm water the Krua.co way.
• Grated coconut: frozen fresh grated coconut from Thai grocers, or tinned young coconut meat; avoid desiccated.
• ถ้วยตะไล (Thai ramekins): small ceramic cups at Thai grocers and online; ramekins or dariole moulds work, and a greased square cake tin works for the tray version.
• Steaming: a bamboo steamer or a deep pot with a trivet and a tight lid is all you need.

Sources

This recipe is translated from the following Thai-language sources. Where they disagree, we've said so.