Diwali recipes, here are 100+ Indian Diwali recipes for the Hindu festival of lights. From popular Gulab jamun to traditional sweets prepared with cardamom, jaggery and ghee.
Looking for mouth-watering snacks that are addictive? Discover addictive murukku recipes and snacks like samosa for the celebration.

Check out my Diwali recipe index page to browse more. Also see Easy Diwali sweets collection.
Jump to:
About
What is Diwali?
Diwali is Indian festival of lights celebrated by Hindu across the country. It is considered as a festival to celebrate victory of Good over the Evil. Diwali also coincides with Harvest festival as per old texts.
When is Diwali 2023?
Usually falls on the month October or November. This year it is Sunday, 12th of November.
How to celebrate Diwali?
Diwali usually means meeting friends and family. Getting blessing from elders at home and among relatives.
Usually even before a month, Diwali shopping starts. All family members get new dress to wear on Diwali day.
Sweets and snacks are mostly prepared at home prior the festival in bulk for family to enjoy as well as to distribute to friends, family and relatives.
The house is cleaned, decorated with flowers and lights for Diwali.
On Diwali days, family members get up early. Elder at home apply oil on head to the family members.
Everyone takes shower (Oil bath) and wear new clothes.
Sweets, snacks, new clothes, jewelry and special menu is prepared to offer in front of God. Children burst crackers.
List of Indian Sweets for Diwali
For the festival of light, many sweets are prepared at home especially to share with friends, family and relatives.
Jamun Recipes
Gulab jamun is one of the most prepared sweets across India. We get Instant Jamun mix to prepare quick and easily.
Otherwise, you can also prepare it from scratch and make few variations when it comes to Gulab jamun.
Below are different types of gulab Jamun recipes:
Gulab jamun with khoya
Sweet potato gulab jamun recipe
Makkan peda recipe
Bread gulab jamun recipe
Gulab jamun recipe using Instant Jamun mix
Kala jamun recipe
Milk powder gulab jamun
Gulkand gulab jamun recipe
Diwali sweets South Indian
From jaggery based adhirasam, suzhiyan to ever green classic recipes like jangri, laddu, mysore pak!
Suzhiyan recipe
Adhirasam recipe
Thengai therattipal
Soft Mysore pak | Traditional soft ghee mysore pak
Badusha recipe | Balushahi
Kaju strawberry
Achu murukku recipe
Thengai therattipal
Famous Diwali sweets
Other classics for the festival below:
Jangri | Jalebi | Apple Jalebi | Sweet boondi |
Ashirasam | Poli | Somas | Diamond cuts |
Sweet potato poli | Sojji appam | Badam kheer | Sweet mixture |
Sweet sev |
Halwa
Easy halwa recipes that you can choose ingredient and prepare it with ghee for Diwali. Fruits, dals, vegetables, flours.... what's your choice?
Burfi
Burfis are super quick to prepare (Under 30 mins). Here are some easy burfi recipes for Diwali from my website.
Ladoos
Mom makes perfect boondi ladoo just like how they serve in weddings & sweet shops. Below you can find all ladoo recipes:
Other snacks
Murukku
Diwali means murukku when it comes to south India. Being a south Indian, I have tasted all sort of murukku. Here are different varieties of murukku recipes in my website.
Browse 20+ more murukku recipes➡
Other snacks
Kesari
Kesari are quick & easy to prepare, beginner friendly and handy when you have not planned anything.
Videos
Here is the playlist in my Youtube channel where you can watch all the videos in one place.
Milk based sweets
Nostalgia
For me Diwali means thrill, joy, happiness😍. Who can ever forget the childhood days filled with all these mixed emotions.
My joy starts even before 100 days from the festival. Yes! I take the calendar, mark the count down with a pencil in a corner of the daily sheet calendar😛.
And every single day when I tear off the calendar sheets, I will get so excited and count my days for the big day of festival 😆.
What made Deepavali so exciting those days and why its not now, I always ask myself🤨.
Favorite part
I still remember the cracker and firework stories in my childhood. Every single thing.
We the kids in the street will be having competition, like in front of who's house there is more cracker papers.
Burst crackers and sweep the papers in a corner to show how much we have burst. I love love to burst crackers.
Right from oosi pattasu to Laksmi vedi. And the cape - dot cape, which we burst with a hammer, roll cape with the toy g*n. I am not big fan of 'at*m bom*'. It's too loud for me, no fun.
But Laksmi vedi is class. It gives lots of paper kuppai, just what we want. And I have never burst 1000 walas. Only the 100s.
And the Bijili crackers. How colorful were those bijilis used to be and sometimes, we even untie the saram red fort crackers to bijilis and burst for more time.
We do lot of naughty things while bursting crackers, though not serious ones, it will be up to our range 😉
Like gather all the leftover papers and dig the cracker inside it and make it burst. It will blow up all the papers up and we watch the fun.
Diwali and rain comes together hand to hand. We will be so worried and our prayers to God will be only that it should not rain! How big our prayers, see, at that age. 😉
Crackers 🧨
And we don't even leave rainwater that is in the open fields opposite to our home.
We quickly place the crackers inside it and make it burst, and it spills water all over. 😀
And all these things, I do these with my brother Sendhil Kumar Ramalingam .
Not to forget the mini competitions that who wake up first and burst the first cracker in the street. We burst the loudest to make the point that we did it first.
For me I wont get sleep at all on the eve of Diwali. Its pure excitement and nothing else.
My brother will be equally excited, but he will sleep like anything in the morning. I will be waking him every time.
Festival day
Those days I don't even care about the Diwali works mom had. Only I used to do is enjoy with my brother. Until he went to hostel for his higher studies.
Then the scenarios just changed. In those 4 years when he was in hostels, he will even sometimes not come home for Diwali.
Me and mom used to shed tears for that too, which my dad always mocks at 🙂
My brother loves wheat halwa and mom makes it at times for Diwali.
But after he went to job, and though he will keep the suspense until last day whether he is coming or not, I had one more advantage, he will also buy crackers, dress for me.
And mainly the salwars, chudidars from B'lore 😉
Food
The whole Diwali day will be full of eating sweets, snacks prepared for Diwali along with Idli, chutney, podi, suzhiyan, adhirasam, vadai.
No cooking that day and we used to eat all these and get heart burn of course because of all those oily goodies!
Celebration at home
Who cared, we totally enjoyed the food and time. We wake up like around 3.00 am and mom will lit lamp in the pooja room, keep sheekai / arappu thool in a bowl, and sesame oil in another bowl.
Elder in the house will apply those two in the head for sastra and we take oil bath, come back and wear some other new dress, not the diwali dress and eagerly wait for the pooja to get over.
After the pooja is over, we fall on the elders foot and get our dresses and rush to wear the dress. The smell of the new dress, how exciting it will be! 🙂
And not to forget to show off your dress to the friends and neighbors 😉 Now enough of my stories and here is the list of recipes for this Diwali.
Ingredients
Diwali recipes - Preparation and cooking time varies from recipe to recipe. Please check the individual to know. Prep time varies from 12 hrs to 10 mins and cooking from 1 hr to 15 mins.
And main ingredients in sweets are milk, khoya, sugar, besan/ kadalai maavu, maida, urad dal, badam, pista, cashew nuts, coconut, rava, jaggery, ghee, oil.
For snacks, mainly rice flour, urad dal flour, gram flour, oil etc; Click on the picture for the respective recipes.
Recipe card
Diwali recipes
Ingredients
- Jaggery
- Gram flour
- Ghee Clarified butter
- Sugar
- Rice flour
- Oil
Instructions
- Please refer individual posts for the respective recipe instructions.
Hema
I enjoyed reading this, same thoughts here, those days will never come back, feeling nostalgic..
Kurinji
Mouth watering clicks.....
Jayanthi
Amazing nostalgic memories beautifully penned ❤️ and woww watta a sweets and savouries collection...
Raks Anand
Thanks a lot 🙂
Gayathri Ramanan
wow..Fabulous collection of diwali sweets and snacks.....
AparnaRajeshkumar
what a collection u have ? i agree with one point ... saying about dress .. omg how can i explain we too get only for diwali ! and now i am getting every month. old is gold is n't it ...
Shabitha Karthikeyan
Nice post !! Surely our kids miss all those excitement and fun.
Shobana Vijay
Delicious and mouth watering sweets and snacks
suganya ram
Awesome collections Rak's. U rock.
suganya ram
This comment has been removed by the author.
Nivedhanams Sowmya
This comment has been removed by the author.
Nivedhanams Sowmya
What a beautiful collection!!! drool worthy pictures!! very festive!!!
Srilakshmi
Hi what all i experienced in my childhood u mentioned here, my eyes shredded with tears recollecting the memories.
Thank you raks for making me to recollect my childhood
Aruna Manikandan
wonderful collection raji 🙂
சாருஸ்ரீராஜ்
raji wht u told is the same of us too .but for me two brothers , they wont give big vedi only othai vedi ,and all the crackers will be given to me..
Karpagam Srinivasan
Wow, after reading your diwali story, I burst into tears....feeling very nostalgic...Wish those days come back again.....
Shaami (Shajitha Habeeb)
I enjoyed your childhood stories, very interesting ! ! want to try all ur diwali sweets recipes...following you, visit my space if you get time.
Aps Prabhu
Hats off to your sweet collection
Each and every dish is super
Elizabeth Oommen
Lady . . . Hats off . . . Love u for making my life so tasty . .. I really enjoy cooking stealing all ur ideas .. Hehehheeh . . . U r just wonderful . . . My hubby has started appreciating my cooking after 3 yrs of marriage . . Hehhehe . .. God bless u darling ".
HEMA
Hi , raks i tried out badusha, boondhi laddu, pottukadalai murukku, mysore pak ,it came out very well . iam very pleased to share my heartfelt thanks to you ...and i have a request can u pls tell me measurent for milagaipodi (one which we use for daily samayal ). this is really gonna to be useful tip for all like your other posts ..thank u
HEMA
Hi
Raks u r really ROCKING
plzz continue the great job
HEMA
Hi Raks,
you r ROCKING
Plzzzzzz continue the great job
HATS OFF
Raks anand
Thank you 🙂 You mean this? http://www.rakskitchen.net/2013/06/2-sambar-powder-recipe-homemade-sambar.html
Punitha
Mouth watering clicks..... 😛
Harshita Kapur
You can literally open up a sweet shop!! 😀 😀 I mean.......so many sweets!!! Yum Yum!
Vidya
Superb words... Me have the same feeling.. My kid misses all those fun we used to have...
Amudha Pragasam
Hiii.. Raks.. Awesome collections of recipes.. Thanks for such great job.. Keep going.. RAKS.. 🙂
Vidya Ramesh
Hi
You are very good inspiration for all of us. Have a superb blog.. I should say that you are a very good cook without any doubt and at the sametime a good writer. I was taken back to my childhood days when I read you. Felt that you and I were staying on the same street. Whatever pranks you had done for Diwali, the same we also used to do, especially for the "Paper Kuppai", For this Diwali Iam making Badam Burfi and Moong Dal Laddu and karasev, from your recipes..Have a Happy Diwali and God Bles you and your family...
Rajee
Finished making sweets and savoury. If you give idea for lunch on Diwali it will be nice. Confusing what to make.
Raks anand
You can make something light and simple since there will be heavy sweets and snacks 🙂 May be mixed rice variety or simple thogayal, rasam, kootu.
Anil Sahu
Nice Post. Wonderful ideas to make sweet dishes.
Rajee
Thanks and wishes and congrats for the article in The Hindu
Raks Kitchen
Thank you all for your lovely comments
Kuzhali
This write up took me to my childhood days.. am wiling g my tears now honestly
Kuzhali
This write up took me to my childhood days.. am wilping my tears now honestly
Raks Anand
Glad someone loved my write up even after these many year 🙂