Diwali recipes, Indian Diwali recipes

Diwali recipes - Looking for the best Diwali recipes to make this year? Here are 100+ Indian Diwali recipes, including traditional Diwali sweets, crispy snacks, South Indian favourites, murukku and more. Making for the family or preparing a selection to share with friends and relative? You can find plenty of recipes to choose from here.

Check out my Diwali recipe index page to browse more. Also see Easy Diwali sweets collection for quick and simple recipes.

Jump to:

• About Diwali
• Diwali Sweets
• South Indian Diwali sweets
• Popular Diwali sweets
• Milk based
• Halwa Recipes
• Burfi Recipes
• Ladoo REcipes
• Kesari REcipes
• Diwali snacks
• Murukku
• Classic Diwali snacks
• Videos
• Nostalgia
• Recipe card
• Diwali Recipes

About Diwali

What is Diwali?

Diwali, also known as Deepavali, is Indian festival of lights celebrated by Hindus and has significance for other communities and traditions as well. The festival is associated with the victory of light over darkness and good over evil.

For many families, Diwali is also a time for getting together, wearing new clothes, preparing special food and sharing sweets and snacks with friends, family and relatives.

When is Diwali 2026?

Usually falls on the month October or November depending on the lunar calendar. In 2026, Diwali falls on Sunday, November 8.

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.

Diwali Sweets

For the festival of light, sweets go hand in hand. Traditional sweets are prepared at home to enjoy with family and to share with friends and relatives. There are plenty of choices here, from syrup-based sweets such as Gulab Jamun and Jangri, to halwa, burfi, ladoo and South Indian favorites.

Gulab 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.

Here are some gulab jamun recipes:

South Indian Diwali sweets

South Indian Diwali sweets include traditional favourites such as adhirasam, suzhiyan, jangri, ladoo and mysore pak. Many of these are recipes I grew up eating and continue to make for the festival. From jaggery based adhirasam, suzhiyan to ever green classic recipes like jangri, laddu, mysore pak!

Popular Diwali sweets

Here are some classic sweets that are especially nice for Diwali. You will find syrup-based, traditional made with jaggery or sugar, milk-based and a few easy options too.

Milk based

Easy Diwali Sweets

Don't want to spend hours in the kitchen? These easy Diwali sweets are useful when you want to prepare something homemade without taking a complicated recipe.

Halwa Recipes

Easy halwa recipes that you can choose ingredient and prepare it with ghee for Diwali. Fruits, dals, vegetables, flours.... what's your choice?

Burfi Recipes

Burfis are super quick to prepare (Under 30 mins). Here are some easy burfi recipes for Diwali from my website.

Ladoo REcipes

Mom makes perfect boondi ladoo just like how they serve in weddings & sweet shops. Below you can find all ladoo recipes:

Kesari REcipes

Kesari are quick & easy to prepare, beginner friendly and handy when you have not planned anything.

Diwali 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.

Classic Diwali snacks

Videos

Here is the playlist in my Youtube channel where you can watch all the videos in one place.

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, churidars 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

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. Check out my latest Munthiri Kothu Recipe.

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