Diwali Desserts: Easy Sweets, Cookies and Treats to Bake

From my mom's ghughra to rangoli cookies and cardamom chocolate bark, these are the Diwali desserts I make every year. Mostly eggless, mostly make-ahead, and every one of them gift-worthy.

White chocolate bark mixed with almonds, pistachios, saffron, and cardamom stacked in a gift box.

Cardamom, saffron, pistachios, coconut, almonds, cashews. These are the flavors of Diwali sweets. Some of these Diwali desserts are the traditional sweets I grew up eating, made the way my mom makes them.

Others are my pastry chef take on the festival: cookies, cupcakes and chocolate bark that carry the same flavors in a familiar Western form that you can make with everyday ingredients.

Most of these recipes are eggless, and nearly all of them can be made a day or two ahead, which matters when the festival stretches over five days and every one of them involves visitors.

Start with the barfi and bark since they last the longest, then bake the cookies closer to the day. Whether you call them Diwali sweets, mithai, or Deepavali treats, you'll be sure to find one you love. All of the recipes are collected in one list at the end of this post.

Ghughra in a bowl with Diwali candles in the back.

Traditional Diwali Sweets

These are the recipes that come from my mom's kitchen, with a few shortcuts I've tested enough times to trust. None of them need mawa or a candy thermometer, and all three keep for at least a week, so they're the place to start.

Ghughra (Gujarati gujiya) are the crisp, flaky fried pastries filled with sweetened coconut and semolina that Diwali isn't Diwali without. This is my mom's recipe, made without mawa, and a batch keeps for a week in an airtight container.

Coconut burfi is the two-ingredient sweet: condensed milk and desiccated coconut, cooked down and pressed into a pan, then finished with a sprinkle of gold shimmer sugar. Chocolate burfi is the fastest sweet on this list, a fudgy ricotta-based barfi that sets up in the fridge and is always the first thing to disappear from the tray.

Coconut burfi molded in different shapes and decorated with pistachios.

Diwali Cookies and Biscuits

If you're baking for a crowd, cookies stretch further than mithai and pack more easily into gift boxes. All three of these are eggless.

Nankhatai is the classic Indian shortbread, made with ghee and scented with cardamom, and it's the biscuit every Indian household recognizes. I also make a chocolate nankhatai and a pinwheel nankhatai that look striking in a mixed box.

Cardamom cookies are buttery, crumbly and fragrant, the cookie I bake when I want the house to smell like Diwali.

And rangoli cookies are the showpiece: eggless spiced sugar cookies decorated with colorful rangoli designs, no cutters or special tools, just a piping bag and an overnight dry.

Chocolate Bark and Truffles

Chocolate isn't traditional, but it's the easiest way to make something that looks like it came from a sweet shop, and both of these are no-bake.

Pistachio white chocolate bark with cardamom and rose takes ten minutes, studded with pistachios and rose petals, and breaks into enough shards to fill a whole tray.

Cardamom chocolate truffles are ganache steeped with cardamom, rolled and dusted. They're rich, elegant, and make a beautiful Diwali gift .

Diwali Cupcakes and Baked Treats

These are for the guests who say they don't like Indian sweets. Familiar Western bakes with saffron, chai and cardamom in the batter, so they belong on the same table as everything above.

Saffron cupcakes have kesar in both the cake and the buttercream, bright yellow and lightly floral. Chocolate chai cupcakes are dark chocolate under a chai-spiced frosting made with my homemade chai masala, and mini chai spice donuts use the same blend, baked rather than fried. Those are perfect for breakfast on the morning after the party.

Savory Snacks for Diwali

Every Diwali spread needs something salty between the sweets. My mini vegetable samosas are the make ahead savory I rely on, and they're much better with a chutney or two on the side: cilantro mint chutney for brightness and tamarind date chutney for sweetness. If you're hosting, cucumber and mint chutney sandwiches are an easy addition that holds up on a buffet.

Gifting Homemade Diwali Sweets

Homemade sweets are the Diwali gift people actually remember. The best candidates are the ones that travel well and keep: chocolate burfi, coconut burfi, the pistachio bark and the cardamom truffles all hold for a week or more in a cool spot. Cookies work too, as long as any icing is fully dry before you pack them.

Layer sweets in a box between sheets of parchment, or seal them in cellophane bags tied with ribbon. A mix of two or three from this list makes a mithai box that no store can match. If you're mailing a box, stick to barfi, bark and undecorated cookies; truffles and iced cookies are best delivered by hand.

A Few Notes Before You Start

Almost everything here is eggless by default, and I've marked the exceptions on each recipe. Cardamom, saffron and ghee are the three ingredients that do the heavy lifting across this whole list, so if you're stocking up, start there. My homemade chai spice blend shows up in three of these recipes and takes five minutes to mix.