Homemade Thekua

Thekua is the sweet of Chhath, and in a lot of families it is the only thing anybody bothers to make from scratch that week. Wheat flour worked with jaggery or sugar and ghee, pressed into a wooden mould so it comes out with that flower pattern on one face, then fried slowly until it is dark and hard.

It is not a soft sweet and it is not meant to be. Thekua is dense and biscuit-crisp, more chew than crumble, and it is at its best broken over a cup of tea. That density is also why it travels: it was made to keep for days without a fridge long before anybody was sealing it in a pouch.

We fry it in small batches rather than in a run, because the colour is the whole thing — a minute too long and it turns bitter, a minute short and it never gets crisp. Packed the day it is made.