8 Healthy and Delicious Sweets for this Diwali

Oct 24, 2018Blog

Traditional sumptuous Diwali sweets like gulab jamun, karenjis, ladoo, jalebi etc are either ghee ladden or are sugar saturated. This was never a problem during the old days when sedentary lifestyle was not a norm. People would enjoy the Diwali delicacies and work them off as easily too. However, today’s life, though is jet-setting, it is mostly sedentary. Hence the need to stay calorie conscious is pressing. Given the need to be so precise about food intake, Diwali, recipes and cuisines are being given the healthier spins to make the festival enjoyable for everyone.

A healthy spin to sweets in Diwali might sound preposterous to many. The perception that any kind of baking or using healthier versions of ingredients will do complete injustice to a recipe is not unfounded. However, these healthy recipes turn out as good as the traditional ones. Here are a few sweets that can be made the healthy way this Diwali.

1) Makahana Kheer:

Traditionally, Diwali kheer is made with a lot of dry fruits, sugar, rice and ghee. This not only makes the kheer rich and tasty but also quite calorie loaded. Kheer is, however, one of the most savoured dishes. To give this dish a healthy twist for the diabetic and the calorie conscious, the rice in the kheer can be replaced by lotus seeds or makhana.

Clarified butter or ghee is used for frying the makanas for the recipe. Consumption of ghee in the recommended measurement proves beneficial for our health. However most of the calorie conscious people avoid the intake of ghee as it is low in protein but high in fat content. To make this recipe healthy, its best to dry roast the makhana. Full milk for the kheer can be replaced by skimmed milk and the sweetness can be enhanced by sugar-free cubes. If you can lay your hands on some organic jaggery, it would work out the best towards making this dish healthier.

2) Whole Wheat Halwa:

Halwa made for Diwali is usually made from carrots, lavishly fried in ghee and sugar and garnished with chopped dry fruits. This is obviously not the kind of halwa that can be tagged as a healthy or low calorie. The healthier version of this halwa, is made by replacing the base ingredient of this dish with whole wheat or wheat bran flour. Clarified ghee must be used and limited to a tablespoon so that the wheat flour does not stick to the pan while it is roasted. Garnished with dry fruits, the whole wheat atta is one of the healthiest version of halwa one may have.

3) Healthy flex seeds Ladoos:

Besan ke ladoo, coconut ladoo and ladoos made of semolina are a must for Diwali in any Indian household. The recipe involves a lot of frying and roasting of the base ingredients along with sugar.

The healthier twist to this recipe is adding roasted and grounded flaxseeds to the recipe along with dry fruits. Sugar will be a part of these ladoos. However, the healthier version will include sugar-free sweeteners or organic jaggery.

4) Roasted Chivda:

This is one Diwali snack that every Maharashtrian household will definitely make. Traditionally each of the ingredients that goes into this recipe is deep fried. An easy to make snack, all that is needed is for the ingredients to be dry roasted. The tampering at the end can be in two tablespoons of any healthy oil, like rice bran oil or sunflower oil. Once this super easy make snack is ready, store it in airtight containers to last, long after Diwali too.

5) Baked Sankarpali:

Made out of semolina and maida mixed with sugar traditionally, Sankarpalli is a deep fried cookie. It is flaky in texture and makes for a great snack. This is another Diwali speciality of Maharashtra though, in the northern parts of India, this is a popular snack.

Making sankarpalli healthy is convenient as the taste and the texture of these diamond shaped cookies don’t really change with an alteration in its cooking method. Though the colour would be a deeper brown for the fried ones and more pale for the baked ones, nothing else changes for this snack when baked.

6) Dates and Oats Ladoo :

This Diwali diverge from the traditional sweets and indulge in a healthy sweet snack of dates and oats. Both of these ingredients are known for their health-enhancing properties. The ingredients are dry roasted and then mixed together to form ladoos. Storing them in airtight containers make them last for a couple of days.

Conclusion:

Diwali is a festival of happiness and bright lights. No one should be compromising on this occasion may it be for calorie counts or for a guilt-ridden trip. Healthy does not have to mean bland food. This perception stems from ill-informed information and knowledge about the food we eat and consider bad for the weighing scale. For instance, fat is avoided at every turn when it comes to eating healthy. However how many of us really understand that some of the fat is important for the body to function? This Diwali try to bake and dry roast the ingredients and make way for the sweets into your healthy lifestyle.

Disclaimer – “Views expressed in the blogs, are exclusive thoughts of the author and are not necessarily
aligned to Vilina Refined Oil’s policies”.