Rajasthani sweets in one minute
If you remember nothing else, remember this: in Rajasthan, sweets are not dessert. They are breakfast, they are hospitality and they are how a family says welcome.
The one to plan around: ghevar, which appears in July and August for Teej and Raksha Bandhan. Come in the rains and you will see it stacked in towers.
The one you can eat all year: malpua with rabri in Pushkar, a syrup-soaked pancake with cool, thick milk.
Facts to know
- The word
- Mithai, sweets in general
- Key ingredient
- Desi ghee, clarified butter
- Milk solids
- Mawa, milk cooked down until dry
- Thickened milk
- Rabri, eaten chilled
- When to eat
- Any time of day, often with tea
- The surprise: Jodhpur's mawa kachori, a flaky pastry filled with sweetened milk solids and dipped in syrup.
- The everyday one: a hot jalebi from the pan, eaten standing at a sweet shop counter with a glass of chai.
- The home one: churma, crushed baked wheat with ghee and sugar, served beside dal and baati in every Rajasthani family.
- The rule: a bite of something sweet in the middle of a savoury meal is perfectly correct. Rajasthani meals mix the two from start to finish.
Local tip
When someone offers you a sweet in their home or shop, take a small piece even if you're full. Refusing a sweet can feel like refusing the welcome.
What Rajasthani sweets are made of
A desert kitchen had little fresh fruit for much of the year, but it had cows, buffaloes, camels, wheat and gram. Almost every sweet in the state is built from those few things.
Ghee: clarified butter, the soul of the Rajasthani sweet. Good shops fry and bind in pure desi ghee, and will tell you so if you ask.
Mawa: also called khoya, milk stirred in a wide iron pan for hours until it becomes dry and crumbly. The base of barfi, peda and mawa kachori.
Rabri: milk boiled down slowly into soft layers of cream, sweetened and chilled. Eaten alone, or poured over jalebi, malpua and ghevar.
- Chhena: fresh cheese made by curdling milk, the base of the spongy rasgulla. Bikaner is the great Rajasthani name for it.
- Besan: gram flour, roasted in ghee for mohanthal and laddoos. The smell of roasting besan is the smell of Diwali in our lanes.
- Wheat and semolina: for churma, malpua, ghevar and the fine fried threads of feeni.
- Sesame and jaggery: the winter pair, made into til patti, gajak and laddoos in January.
- Flavours: cardamom, saffron, rose water, pistachio and almond. Rajasthani sweets are rich rather than complicated.
- Silver leaf: vark, the fine edible silver laid on barfi and ghevar. Strict vegetarians and vegans sometimes ask how it was made, and good shops will answer.
Local tip
Watch for a sweet maker stirring milk in a wide iron kadhai in the old city lanes. That shop makes its own mawa, and its barfi will be better for it.
The sweet of each city
Every Rajasthani town has a sweet it is proud of, and most families will tell you theirs is the best in India. Here is our list, as fairly as a Jaipur family can make it.
Jaipur: ghevar, feeni and the winter halwas
Ghevar: the city's great sweet of the rains, plain, with malai cream, with mawa or soaked in rabri.
- Feeni: nests of fine, flaky fried threads, eaten with sweetened milk around the kite festival in January.
- Winter: moong dal halwa, slow-cooked lentils in ghee, and gajar halwa from red winter carrots.
- Where: LMB in Johari Bazaar, a sweet shop and vegetarian restaurant in one since the 1950s. Our food of Jaipur guide has more.
Jodhpur: mawa kachori and the richest lassi
Mawa kachori: a crisp pastry filled with sweetened milk solids and nuts, dipped in syrup. Heavy, golden and unforgettable.
- Makhaniya lassi: thick yoghurt whipped with sugar, saffron and cardamom under a lid of cream. Shri Mishrilal Hotel at the clock tower is the famous address.
- Gulab jamun: the old sweet shops carrying the Chaturbhuj family name are known for them, and Jodhpur even cooks them into a savoury curry.
- Where: Janta Sweet Home on Nai Sarak is an old favourite. Our food of Jodhpur guide lists the rest.
Bikaner: rasgullas and a merchant's sweet tooth
Rasgullas: spongy balls of chhena in light syrup, sold in tins across India but best eaten fresh and cool in the old city.
- Where: Chhotu Motu Joshi near Kote Gate, famous for its breakfasts and its rasgullas.
- The savoury side: bhujia, the spiced gram-flour snack. Haldiram's began as a small Bikaner shop in 1937. See our Bikaner food guide.
Pushkar: malpua and rabri
Malpua: a thick pancake of flour and milk, fried in ghee and soaked in syrup, served hot with chilled rabri.
- Rose gulkand: a preserve of rose petals and sugar, made from the roses grown around the town for the temples.
- Remember: Pushkar is a vegetarian, alcohol-free pilgrim town, and its sweet shops are part of the pilgrimage. Our food of Pushkar guide explains.
Ajmer: sohan halwa
- What it is: a dense, chewy mix of wheat, milk, ghee and sugar, studded with nuts and cooked until it sets almost like toffee.
- Where: sold in the lanes near the Ajmer Sharif Dargah, often bought by pilgrims to carry home.
Alwar: milk cake
- What it is: a grainy, caramel-coloured set milk sweet, a cousin of kalakand, cut into squares.
- Why it travels: it keeps better than most milk sweets, so it is the gift people carry from Alwar to relatives across India.
Jaisalmer and Shekhawati
- Jaisalmer: ghotua laddoo, small, dense laddoos of gram flour and ghee from the sweet shops of the golden city.
- Shekhawati: milk pedas from Chirawa, eaten after a thali of ker sangri in the painted towns. See the food of Jaisalmer.
Just over the border: Agra
- Petha: translucent candied ash gourd, Agra's famous sweet, plain or flavoured with rose and saffron. Our food of Agra guide has more.
Local tip
Don't try every city's sweet in one day. Rajasthani sweets are rich, and two pieces of mawa kachori are a full meal.
The calendar of sweets
Jaipur tells the month by its shop windows. Many of our sweets appear for a festival or a season and then vanish, and that is part of their magic.
Facts to know
- January
- Til patti, gajak, feeni for the kites
- February to March
- Gujiya and malpua at Holi
- July to August
- Ghevar for Teej and Raksha Bandhan
- October to November
- Mohanthal, laddoos and barfi at Diwali
- November to February
- Moong dal halwa, gajar halwa, gond laddoo
Makar Sankranti, 14 January
- Sesame everywhere: til patti and gajak, brittle sweets of sesame and jaggery, believed to warm the body in the coldest weeks.
- On the rooftops: a plate of til laddoos and feeni beside every kite reel. See Makar Sankranti and our piece on kite day in Jaipur.
Holi, February or March
- Gujiya: half-moon pastries filled with mawa, nuts and coconut, fried and sometimes dipped in syrup.
- Malpua: joins the table for the festival of colour. See our guide to Holi.
Teej and the monsoon, July or August
- Ghevar season: the sweet shops stack it in towers, and married daughters receive it from their mothers' homes.
- Raksha Bandhan: a week or two later, the ghevar boxes go round the family again. See Teej and Teej in Jaipur.
Diwali, October or November
- Mithai boxes: every family buys and gives boxes of kaju katli, barfi, laddoos and milk cake.
- Mohanthal: gram flour roasted in ghee and set into a rich fudge, the Diwali sweet of many Marwari homes. See Diwali in Rajasthan.
The cold months, November to February
- Winter sweets: moong dal halwa, gajar halwa and laddoos of gond, an edible gum fried in ghee with nuts, thought to keep you strong through the cold.
- At night: hot milk with saffron in clay cups from the stalls of the old city.
Ghevar, the sweet of the rains
Ghevar is made from almost nothing: ghee, flour, milk and syrup. Yet watching a sweet maker pour it, thread by thread, into a ring of hot ghee is one of the great sights of a Rajasthani monsoon.
How it's made: cold ghee is rubbed until white and creamy, then a thin batter is poured in streams into hot ghee inside a deep ring mould, building a honeycomb disc.
Then the syrup: the fried disc is soaked in sugar syrup and topped, or left plain.
- The kinds: plain, malai with cream, mawa with milk solids, rabri ghevar, and small mini ghevar for those who want only a taste.
- Why the rains: humid air is said to help the honeycomb form, and it is the sweet tied to Teej and the month of Shravan.
- How to eat it: broken by hand into wedges, honeycomb side up, passed around on a steel plate. Never cut with a knife at home.
- Not feeni: feeni is a nest of fine threads eaten in January. Ghevar is a honeycomb eaten in the rains.
- Read more: our full piece on ghevar and Teej.
Local tip
Choose a busy counter in the monsoon. A queue means the ghevar was fried that morning, and stock that sits in the humidity spoils.
Sweets at a Rajasthani table
Visitors are often surprised to find the sweet on the thali at the very start of the meal. Nobody waits for dessert in Rajasthan.
On the thali: a small bowl of something sweet sits beside dal, vegetables and breads from the first mouthful. Our Rajasthani thali guide explains the order.
Churma: baked wheat baati crushed with ghee, sugar or jaggery and cardamom. Eaten between bites of dal baati. Our dal baati churma recipe has the method.
- Lapsi: a soft porridge of broken wheat, ghee and jaggery, cooked for small celebrations at home.
- At weddings: the sweet counters are the longest at the feast, and a family's standing is often judged by them. Our Rajput weddings explained piece describes the feast.
- At the door: good news, a new job or a guest arriving is marked by a box of sweets. Saying muh meetha karo, sweeten your mouth, is part of the greeting.
- In temples: sweets offered to the gods come back to worshippers as prasad, blessed food. Accept it with the right hand and eat it.
- In palace kitchens: a private dinner in a palace often ends with a royal sweet course, from saffron rabri to fresh malpua.
Local tip
If you are given prasad at a temple, eat it or carry it carefully. It should never be thrown away or left on the ground.
Where we take guests to taste them
The best sweets in Rajasthan come from old family shops with steel counters, not from smart boxes at the airport. These are the long-established names our families have queued at for years.
Jaipur: LMB in Johari Bazaar for ghevar and a tour of Rajasthani sweets, and Rawat Mishthan Bhandar near Sindhi Camp for mawa kachori as well as pyaaz kachori.
Jodhpur: Janta Sweet Home on Nai Sarak for mawa kachori, and Shri Mishrilal Hotel at the entrance to Sardar Market for makhaniya lassi before noon.
Facts to know
- Jaipur
- LMB, Johari Bazaar; Rawat Mishthan Bhandar
- Jodhpur
- Janta Sweet Home; Shri Mishrilal Hotel
- Bikaner
- Chhotu Motu Joshi, near Kote Gate
- Best hour
- Morning, when the day's batch is fresh
- Bikaner: Chhotu Motu Joshi near Kote Gate for rasgullas and a proper Bikaner breakfast.
- Pushkar and Ajmer: the sweet shops of the main bazaar for malpua, and the lanes near the dargah for sohan halwa.
- With a guide: our food walks stop at a sweet counter or two between kachori and chai. See our food and royal kitchens experience.
- Cook it yourself: a cooking class in a haveli can include churma, malpua or a winter halwa.
- Across the state: our food lover's Rajasthan journey links the great sweet towns.
Local tip
Ask your guide to take you to the shop his own family uses for Diwali sweets. It is rarely the most famous one, and often the best.
Words to know at the sweet counter
Sweet shops in the old cities are loud, quick and wonderful. A few words make you a regular rather than a tourist.
Halwai: the sweet maker, and the name for his shop. Many halwai families have run the same counter for generations.
Mithai: sweets in general. Mithai ka dabba is a box of sweets, the gift for every visit.
- Chashni: the sugar syrup that soaks jalebi, ghevar and gulab jamun. Ask for less if you prefer it lighter.
- Sold by weight: most sweets are priced by the kilo. Ask for aadha kilo, half a kilo, or paav, a quarter, or point and ask for one piece to taste.
- Garam: hot. Asking for garam jalebi tells the halwai you want the next batch from the pan, not the tray.
- Desi ghee: pure clarified butter. Asking whether a sweet is made in it is a perfectly polite question.
- Thank you: dhanyavaad, or simply a smile and bahut badhiya, very good. The halwai will remember you the next morning.
Eating sweets safely
Milk sweets are rich, perishable and made in a hot climate. A little care means you can enjoy them without a second thought.
Choose busy shops: high turnover means fresh stock. A quiet counter with flies on the barfi is a shop to walk past.
Fried and hot is safest: jalebi, malpua and kachori straight from the pan are the safest sweets in any bazaar.
- Be careful with cream: rabri, malai ghevar and cream-topped sweets should be eaten the same day, from a shop you trust.
- Take it slowly: Rajasthani sweets are much richer than most visitors expect. Share, and taste rather than finish.
- Summer care: from April to June, milk sweets spoil quickly. Stick to hot fried sweets and sealed boxes.
- Dietary needs: most sweets are vegetarian, many contain no egg, and almost all contain dairy and sugar. Ask about nuts if you have an allergy.
- More advice: our Rajasthani food guide and health and safety pages cover eating well on the road.
Sweets that travel, and sweets that don't
Every guest wants to take a box home. Some Rajasthani sweets survive the flight beautifully, and some should be eaten on the spot.
Travels well: sohan halwa, Agra petha, milk cake, til patti, gajak, kaju katli and Bikaner's tinned rasgullas.
Travels for a day or two: plain ghevar in a sealed box, kept cool. Warm it gently in the oven before serving to restore its crispness.
- Eat it here: rabri, malai ghevar, malpua, fresh rasgullas and anything topped with cream.
- Packing: ask for a sealed box, double-wrapped, and keep it in your hand luggage away from the heat of the car boot.
- Check the rules: your home country may restrict dairy products in luggage, so check before you buy large boxes.
- Savoury too: a packet of Bikaneri bhujia travels better than any sweet, and makes friends at home.
Local tip
Buy your boxes on the last morning, not the first. Even the hardiest sweets taste better a day old than a week old.
When to come for sweets
Any month gives you jalebi and rabri. But if sweets are a reason for your journey, two seasons stand out above all.
The monsoon, July and August: ghevar season, with Teej, Raksha Bandhan and the old cities green after the rain. Our monsoon in Mewar journey fits it.
Before Diwali, October or November: every sweet shop at its fullest, and Jaipur's bazaars lit end to end. See Diwali in Jaipur.
- January: sesame sweets, feeni and kites over the walled city.
- The cold months: winter halwas and gond laddoos, eaten on cold mornings with hot chai.
- For families: children love watching jalebi and ghevar being made, and a morning sweet stop makes any walk more popular. See Rajasthan with children.