🎉 Festive Snacks · Diwali
Thekua
Bihar's festival cookie — whole wheat, jaggery, fennel and coconut. Fried or baked. Chhath Puja's sacred sweet.
Bihar's festival cookie — whole wheat, jaggery, fennel and coconut. Fried or baked. Chhath Puja's sacred sweet.
Thekua is Bihar and Jharkhand's most sacred festival sweet — made specifically for Chhath Puja and offered to the sun. It is a firm, slightly sweet cookie of whole wheat flour, jaggery and fennel seeds, traditionally fried in ghee or pressed into moulds and baked. Unlike the festival snacks of Maharashtra and Rajasthan, thekua has a dense, chewy texture rather than a crispy one — more like a firm shortbread than a fried biscuit.
Dissolve jaggery in warm water. Add ghee to flour and rub in. Add jaggery water gradually to make a stiff, firm dough — stiffer than roti. Knead 5 minutes. Rest 15 minutes.
Jaggery contains molasses which adds hygroscopic (moisture-attracting) compounds — this is why thekua dough feels slightly sticky despite being stiff. The molasses also contributes to the Maillard browning during frying, producing the characteristic golden-brown colour from wheat and jaggery together.
Roll 8mm thick. Cut into rounds or press in thekua moulds. Fry in medium-hot ghee at 160°C for 3–4 minutes each side, or bake at 180°C for 18–20 minutes.
Fried thekua is slightly crispier on the outside with a denser interior. Baked thekua is more uniform in texture — drier and harder throughout. The fried version is traditional; the baked version is modern.