Gokulashtami recipes | Krishna Jayanthi recipes

Gokulashtami recipes, Krishna jayanthi recipes collection that we make for the festival. Traditional, popular recipes from seedai, murukku, appam all recipe links in one place for easy access.

These recipes are usually prepared for the gokulashtami festival special food especially, but you can make in regular days or these can be made for Deepavali too.

Check out my other collections in my website.

Jump to:

• About Janmashtami
• Janmashtami recipes
• Celebration guide
• Safety
• Offering God
• Shopping list for Gokulashtami:
• Gokulashtami 2026 date
• Traditional snacks
• Easy sweets
• Aval recipes
• Recipe card
• Gokulashtami recipes | Krishna Jayanthi Recipes

Gokulashtami wishes

About Janmashtami

Gokulashtami also known as Janmashtami or Krishna janmashtami is a Hindu festival in India, to celebrate the birthday of Lord Krishna. He is the eighth avatar of Lord Vishnu.

Every year, in Hindu calender it falls in the Tamil month of Aavani (ashtami thithi) and in english calender, it's either in August or September.

Though it is widely celebrated among Hindus, it is an Important festival for people following Vaishnavism/ Iyengars.

As a kid, I always have celebrated Gokulashtami in my parents place. We make kai murukku, uppu & vella seedai, appam and payasam.

I remember only dry snacks though. We draw maa kolam, baby Krishna's feet from entrance to the pooja room. This is to indicate baby himself visiting our home.

Though I have not helped much and only see what my mom does, it always is a fascinating festival when compared to others because of drawing the baby's foot in kolam.

The festival is celebrated all over India though the way of celebration differs from region to region, house to house.

Mom says they always celebrate in their childhood too (my paati's house). So thought I too should follow the tradition at least for Aj to know all these.

Janmashtami recipes

These are the recipes we traditionally make for Gokulashtami. Please browse my other recipes too below which you can make at home.

1. Nei appam recipe (or)
2. Instant Wheat flour appam recipe
3. Kai murukku recipe
4. Uppu seedai and vella seedai recipe
5. Paal payasam recipe (or)
6. Aval payasam recipe

Check out the other recipes you can make during festival

Browse more ➡️

As a disclaimer, I have to say - this is only the way WE celebrate the festival in our family, only our family practices. This will be helpful for myself sure for future reference, and if anyone is benefited from this post, I am more than happy 🙂

Here's my Youtube playlist for Janmashtami Videos

Check out my Gokulashtami recipe videos in Youtube.

Celebration guide

• After head bath, soak raw rice - for kai murukku, uppu and vella seedai together and for appam (if making nei appam with rice) separately and for maakolam separately.
• Buy fresh milk if possible and boil milk, set for curd, and separate butter if you want fresh butter. Or you can keep store bought butter too.
• You can finish all you other regular breakfast, lunch work and cleaning work and start the festival work.
• First you can finish drawing kolam so that it dries up while pooja. We draw baby's feet from house entrance until pooja place and again draw from pooja place to house entrance. Meaning, we are inviting God and finish our pooja, send him praying to come next year same as this year and bless us.
• Now off to Kitchen work. Spread the soaked rice for snacks in a white cloth. Keep a clean white cloth separately for this purpose alone.
• As mentioned in the post, grind the rice and divide the flour for murukku and for seedai. For seedai, we need to dry roast until steam rises. So do that and keep aside.
• Now make dough for murukku, salt and sweet versions.  In the clean cloth, make murukku one side and keep seedai rolled other side.
• Make 3 seepanguzhal for God as mentioned in my post (rolled as stick - lollipop version of seedai for baby).

Safety

You should fry murukkus first, salt seedai next and sweet seedai last as sweet makes oil cloudy. Every time you handle murukku, seedai in hot oil BE IN A SAFE DISTANCE, after dropping in oil.

After this work, you can make paal payasam or aval payasam. Then make appam. Boil milk and add sugar candy, pacha karpooram to it.

Now keep ready payasam, butter, curd, milk and aval (Poha/ rice flakes) each in a bowl. We add couple of tulsi leaves in each bowl for garnish.

Offering God

If you have a Krishna idol or picture decorate it with tulsi, flowers (Sangu poo if possible) In front of Krishna, over the kolam, Spread banana leaf, keep murukku, seedai and appam.

In the thaamboola thattu (Pithalai thattu) keep betel nut and leaves (vethala paaku) , fruits and coconut if possible. We break coconut while pooja.

Keep along the other things like payasam, aval, butter, curd, milk in separate bowls (Silver if possible). We should keep these vessels separately just for offering to God.

We usually keep all the things prepared in front of God and sweet separately in a banana leaf piece (yeadu) for the vilakku (lamp).

Apparently, at our grand mom's (mom's mom) house, they do the pooja at 12 am midnight. But we do only in the evening while we lit lamp. Above all, don't frustrate yourself putting all works in your head and do it as burden.

Once in a while these festivals come, so we can do it to our heart satisfaction with whatever we can do.

If you're an office goer, opt for simplicity by offering curd, milk, butter and aval (flattened rice) - his favorites - along with some fresh fruits. If time permits, consider preparing a delicious payasam or appam to enhance the meal. Check out my Paal payasam (Milk kheer recipe) you can make for special occasions.

You can make murukku & sedai the previous day too.

Check out the photos shared by my follower friends in this Facebook album:

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.1286652008012372&type=3

So here's my shopping list for the festival. Add or reduce as per your family practice.

Shopping list for Gokulashtami:

• Jaggery
• Cardamom
• Cashew nuts
• Urad dal (black gram without skin)
• Wheat flour (if making wheat flour appam)
• Raw rice
• Sesame seeds
• Aval (Poha/ flattened rice) 
• Oil
• Milk
• Butter
• Coconut 
• Betel nut leaves
• Fruits (Banana, Apple, Orange, Grapes, Guava)
• Banana leaf
• Flowers, Sangu poo, Tulsi.

Depending on the dishes you prepare for the festival, please update the shopping list accordingly. Many households make butter murukku, besan ladoo, so Gram flour is an important ingredient.

Gokulashtami 2026 date

Gokulashtami falls on Monday, 26th August. Please check with family elders to align with your traditions.

Here is the collection of all Gokulashtami recipes for this year 2026 (September 4th, Friday).

Click on each picture to get the recipes! Please refer this page to see how to prepare homemade rice flour for these snacks if you wish to prepare from scratch.

Traditional snacks

Uppu and vella seedai two-in-one post is where you have to begin with.

Kai murukku is a traditional snack we prepare at home secondly.

Equally important essentials - Homemade rice flour is basic for the snacks.

Easy sweets

Quickly in fact within 15 minutes, you can prepare this Krishna's favorite sweet.

Nei appam is a traditional sweet prepared, besides it has Krishnar's favorite ghee.

While you can also prepare it with wheat flour.

Also you can make it Instant, with this fail proof recipe for nei appam.

In addition, you want to try something different? Try this maida seedai.

Aval recipes

Check out the recipes with Lord Krishna's favorite ingredient - Aval

Other recipe ideas for Gokulashtami:

Wishing you all a Happy Gokulashtami 🙂

Even if you cannot spare time making complicated gokulashtami recipes, you can still make your celebration by offering Krishna's favorite aval/ rice flakes and butter to him! Check out my healthy Dry fruits ladoo recipe without added sugar or everyone's favourite Rava laddu.

Or you can even quickly whip up dishes like the instant wheat flour appam below, which takes hardly 5 minutes to prepare and 20 minutes of cooking time. The savory snacks with coconut milk are my favorites too.

Recipe card