Small, round, half-sphere coconut cakes cooked in a specially cast iron pan with round indentations — a thin, savoury-sweet coconut milk and rice flour base topped with a slightly sweeter, richer coconut cream topping. The two layers — different in flavour and texture — merge during cooking: the base is slightly crisp at the bottom, the interior soft and yielding, the top barely set, the flavour of toasted coconut permeating the entire preparation. Thompson identifies kanom krok in *Thai Street Food* as one of Bangkok's signature street desserts.
**The base batter:** - Rice flour: the Thai-style fine rice flour (not glutinous rice flour). - Cooked rice: a tablespoon of cooked jasmine rice added to the batter — it provides a richer, more complex rice flavour than rice flour alone. - Coconut milk, palm sugar, salt. - Blended smooth. **The topping:** - Coconut cream (richer than the base), a pinch of salt. No additional sugar — the saltiness of the topping against the sweeter base creates the preparation's characteristic contrast. **The cooking:** 1. Heat the kanom krok pan (a cast iron or aluminium pan with 8–12 round indentations, approximately 5cm diameter). Brush with oil. 2. Pour the base batter into each indentation — three-quarters full. 3. Almost immediately: add the topping (plain coconut cream) to each indentation — a teaspoon on top of the base batter. 4. Cover with a lid. Cook for 4–5 minutes until the base is set and the edge begins to pull away from the pan wall. 5. Remove with a small spoon. The base should be slightly browned on its exterior; the top should be barely set, almost liquid. 6. Eat immediately. They continue setting as they cool — the ideal is a warm, slightly liquid interior. Decisive moment: The pan temperature and the lid. The cast iron pan must be at temperature before the batter is added — a correctly heated pan produces a crust on the base of each cake within 60 seconds. The lid traps the steam from the batter, which cooks the top gently while the base crisps. No lid: the top does not cook evenly. Cool pan: the base never crisps.
*Thai Food* (2002); *Thai Street Food* (2010)