Desserts You Must Try in Kandy - Mouth-watering flavours in the cultural capital of the teardrop island

Emerging from Dutch colonialism in Sri Lanka, kokis is a traditional dessert in the Indian Ocean island nation that is also being enjoyed as an appetiser and a quick snack. Shiny, crispy and golden-hued, these deep-fried cookies can be seen in both star shapes and rounds. Kokis, in its basic form, is a batter made with coconut milk, eggs, and rice flour, which is fried deep in oil until it develops its shiny, crispy texture. The traditional cookies strike the perfect level of sweetness — not too much, not too little, just the right level of sugary you want.

Chalk white and diamond shaped, Aluwa is a widely popular sweet and dessert in the South Asian nation of Sri Lanka. It is a combination of toasted rice flour with sugar syrup, ground cashew nuts, cloves and cardamom, while some versions replace rice flour with potatoes and others replace sugar with boiled treacle and cashews with mung beans or other types of similar nuts. While aluwa can be found in cafe and coffee shop showcases throughout the country all year round, they can be seen the most in April, when it's the festive season of the Sinhala and Tamil New Year.

Anyone who has been to Sri Lanka is bound to have tasted its renowned, pancake-like hoppers — or appa, as it is known locally. The aptly named pani appa is the sugared version of the famous Sri Lankan hoppers, where pani is sinhalese for honey. The local delicacy employs the same rice flour and coconut milk batter used in ordinary hoppers and is enriched with sugar or thick, syrupy molasses. According to locals, pani appa is best enjoyed with the accompaniment of a hot cup of tea.

Aasmi is yet another traditional Sri Lankan delicacy that mostly comes around the festive season of the Sinhala and Tamil New Year. It is more popular as a sweet but is also being enjoyed as a dessert, mostly by tourists to the island nation. Aasmi mainly consists of a batter made with rice flour, coconut milk, sugar, and water, which is deep fried until it develops its crispy, string-filled structure, and finally drizzled with artificially colour-added sugar syrup, which gives the snack its sweetness.

A combination of kurakkan flour, rice flour, treacle, cardamom, and grated coconut, flattened on kanda leaves and served as it is in the leaves, helapa is, without a doubt, one of the most traditional and authentic Sri Lankan desserts. Helapa can be found being served at cafes, coffee shops and the best restaurants in Kandy the likes offered by Hunas Falls.