Khanom La

Khanom La (ขนมลา) is a sweet from southern Thailand. A sweet batter made mainly from rice flour is poured in thin lines and layered like a net on a hot pan. It is known as a specialty of Nakhon Si Thammarat and has also been handed down in Songkhla and other places. Some pieces are made into a single large, thin sheet, some are folded, and some are wrapped around a stick to form a thin tube. The texture ranges from soft to crisp.

Dropping the batter in a net pattern through fine holes

Khanom La batter is not poured and spread into a single round sheet all at once. The batter is put into a container with small holes in the bottom, and the container is moved over the pan so that the batter falls in thin, crisscrossing lines. Gaps remain between the lines, but the lines join where they overlap, so the result can be lifted as a single sheet.

Example ingredients include non-glutinous rice flour, palm sugar or brown sugar, and eggs. Some versions also mix in glutinous rice flour, so there is no single formula even under the same name. A Thai community product standard classifies it as a sweet in which the batter is cooked as thin lines and then shaped by folding or rolling.

Making thin lines depends not only on the amount of flour but also on the condition of the batter passing through the holes and on how the container is moved. Because tools such as a can with holes punched in it are used, the mesh of the sweet is not a pattern pressed in with a mold but the poured lines themselves.

Local preparation begins even before the rice is ground

La Wat The, made in Tha Sala in Nakhon Si Thammarat, is a la chet handed down in the area around Wat Thewadaram. In this style, a small amount of glutinous rice is added to new-crop local rice. The rice is soaked in water, drained, dried, left overnight, and then ground. The flour is strained, the water is squeezed out to form a mass, and the mass is combined with liquid sugar to make the batter.

Local ingredients also appear in the sugar. Sugar taken from coconut palms along the coast is boiled down, strained, and adjusted to the required viscosity before use. Unlike methods that combine bagged rice flour and sugar, this style involves work even before the rice is turned into flour. Even for the same thin-line sweet, the local way of making it begins at the stage of handling the rice.

Soft la and crisp la

Khanom La is divided into la chet and la krop. La chet uses relatively little oil. The batter is layered fairly thickly, and the cooked sheet is folded into a semicircle or a square. It is gathered into a large, net-like thin sheet.

La krop is a style that aims for crispness. In one method, more sugar is added to la chet and it is dried in the sun. In another style, more rice flour and oil are used, the cooked batter is wrapped around a stick, and the stick is pulled out once it has cooled. The difference is not simply that one is cooked longer than the other; differences in formula, drying, and the rolling step show up in the texture and shape.

Becoming “clothing” at the festival of the tenth lunar month

Khanom La is one of the indispensable sweets of Sat Duean Sip, the festival of the tenth lunar month. It is believed that ancestral spirits return to their relatives on earth and receive offerings and merit from their descendants. The sweet is a snack for the living and also an item delivered to the dead.

In Nakhon Si Thammarat, several kinds of sweets are placed in a set of offerings called mrap. Each shape has a role, and Khanom La, which forms a single large, net-like sheet, represents the clothing worn by the ancestors. Other sweets are assigned roles such as rafts for crossing the river, ornaments, and money to spend. Khanom La is included in the set of offerings both as food and as an item symbolizing the clothing used in the afterlife.

According to another belief, the mouths of the hungry spirits called pret are as small as the eye of a needle, so they can eat Khanom La because it is thin. The same thinness carries two meanings: it is likened to the threads of clothing, and it makes the sweet a food that the spirits can eat.

Offerings lined up for the tenth-lunar-month festival in southern Thailand. 2025. Photo: SouthernTHKnown / CC0.

Families preparing offerings, and trade outside the festival

In southern Thai tradition, the ancestral spirits are welcomed on the day after the full moon of the tenth lunar month and sent off at the end of the month. The large offerings are prepared in the later period: each household or group of relatives places food and daily necessities in a mrap and carries it to the temple. The time for making Khanom La also coincides with the time when relatives returning home gather and divide up the work of preparing the offerings. Families arrange the sweets with the other offerings, carry them to the temple, offer food to the monks, and dedicate the merit to their ancestors.

At the festival at Wat Sema Mueang in Nakhon Si Thammarat, there are examples in which rice, dried goods, seasonal fruit, and five kinds of sweets collected by relatives and neighbors are stacked in a large basket, with Khanom La draped over the top. After the ritual, the offerings are divided up and are also used as offerings on the day the ancestors are sent off.

Today, some Khanom La is sold throughout the year, not only during the festival season. The rolled, crisp style is also made as a market product. The single large sheet that families carry to the temple as an offering and the easy-to-handle tubular sweet both come from the same technique of dropping lines of batter.

Glossary