Diwali 2026: 8

Maharashtrian Faral

Or Snacks That Make The Festival Extra Special

Quick Summary

Diwali 2026, like every year, remains incomplete without its set of snacks and sweets that fuel guests and hosts through schmoozing, partaking in rituals and celebrating the festival. The Maharashtrian version of these is faral, which features an assortment of snacks like sev, chakali, chirote, and sweeter fare like laddoos of different kinds. Marathi families eat it for breakfast after the pre-dawn bath and offer it to visitors and neighbours. Learn more about these snacks below and their ingredients.

Deep Dive

Faral is the Maharashtrian Diwali snacks that are both sweet and savoury, made in bulk and shared with guests and neighbours, quite similar to the Gujarati farsan and the South Indian bakshanam. Making them is often a group effort, with relatives or neighbours cooking in bulk, and the snack plates are then swapped between households. Most of these snacks are fried or roasted and dry, which gives them a long shelf life. Many of them are made throughout the year, but Diwali is when they are made all at once.

Diwali 2026 Faral At A Glance

Before getting into the Maharashtrian Diwali snacks, here’s a look at what the faral preparations have in them and taste.

How The Faral Diwali Snacks Are Made

Each snack is a Diwali 2026 special food that earns its place on the plate through one defining technique.

1. Chakli

The Maharashtrian version of the chakla is called chakalim, which uses bhajani, a flour of roasted rice and pulses; ‘bhajane’ means ‘to roast’ in Marathi. The same spiral is called murukku in Tamil Nadu and chakri in Gujarat.

• Bhajani: rice, chana dal and urad dal, dry-roasted with coriander and cumin seeds, then ground.

• Hot oil, sesame seeds, red chilli powder, asafoetida and salt.

Typically using a higher amount of rice to dal, the bhajani is dry-roasted to reduce the gluten strength of the flours and help in making the dough short. The chakli dough is kneaded into a stiff consistency, with spices, so that the chakli can be shaped into their spiral form, retain their shape and turn out ‘kurkure’. 

2. Chirote

Thin sheets of dough are layered with a ghee-and-cornflour paste called ‘saata’, rolled into a log, sliced and fried so the layers open like petals. It is finished with powdered sugar or dipped in cardamom syrup.

• Maida, rava, hot ghee and salt.

• Saath: ghee whisked with cornflour.

• Powdered sugar or cardamom sugar syrup, and crushed pistachios.

The technique might remind one of the European lamination for pastries like croissants, but instead of cold butter, the chirote uses ghee and some flours. Using ghee optimises it for warmer tropical climates and helps the dough develop that puff pastry-like texture and appeal.

3. Bhakarwadi

A pinwheel-shaped fried snack, bhakarwadi is a tea-time favourite from Pune that is also made for Diwali 2026 guests. The outer dough combines maida and besan, and the coarse filling is a sweet and spicy mix made with roasted dry coconut, sesame and poppy seeds.

• Dough: maida, besan, turmeric, salt and oil

• Filling: roasted dry coconut, sesame seeds, poppy seeds, fennel and cumin, with chilli powder, sugar and amchur

What’s so fun about making a bhakarwadi is stretching out the dough into a sheet, layering the freshly made filling and turning that dough into a log that wraps itself around the filling. This log is then cut to produce the spirals seen on the bhakarwadis. It’s the perfect snack with a cup of milk tea or milk coffee.

4. Chivda

The lightest item on the plate, chivda is made with thin or thick poha and a pinch of powdered sugar to balance its salt and spice.

• Thin poha, peanuts, roasted chana dal, cashews, raisins and dried coconut slices

• Curry leaves, green chillies, turmeric, salt and powdered sugar

Poha holds an important place in Maharashtrian kitchens, and on this list, chivda is perhaps the simplest of them all. The frying bit is important, as poha is delicate and to flash fry, it is important to fry them in a metal sieve, that is lowered in the hot oil, and not being dumped in oil, as the chivda will in done in a few seconds. Then it is mixed with its flavouring agents and enjoyed as a crunchy snack with hot beverages.

5. Shankarpali

A diamond-cut crispy namkeen, called ‘god shankarpali’ in Marathi when sweet, and a savoury khari version often joins it on the plate. Some North Indian shakkar para (same treat, different name) are coated in sugar syrup, whereas the Maharashtrian version is sweetened inside the dough.

• Maida, ghee, milk, sugar and cardamom

What makes shankarpali unique is that, unlike other counterparts from the North, the sugar is directly mixed into the dough and not introduced later. So, you get a sweet snack that is sweet from the inside out, unlike the rest that tends to be dunked in sugar syrup later. It’s the perfect Diwali 2026 fuel for guests to grab between outdoor activities and indoor resting.

6. Karanji

A crescent-shaped fried pastry, karanji is that one faral item that most Maharashtrian Diwali 2026 plates should definitely have, like every year. Its filling is called saran, with the dry coconut version having a longer shelf life, while the fresh coconut version, olya naralachi karanji, has a shorter shelf life. Its cousins include ghughra in Gujarat, kusli in Madhya Pradesh, gujjia in North India and neuri in Goa.

• Shell: maida, rava, ghee and salt

• Saran: roasted dry coconut, poppy seeds, powdered sugar, cashews, raisins and cardamom

Needing a stiff dough just like chakli, before the dough can be mixed, a ‘moyan’ needs to be made, which is mixing the hot fat (ghee) with a bit of flour. While the chakli dough needs to be entirely stiff, the karanji dough has to be both stiff and also stretchy so it can be rolled out, filled and then pleated to seal the filling.

7. Sev

Made by pressing a spiced gram flour dough through a sev maker, also called a sancha, straight into hot oil. Medium-thick sev is also the crunch that goes into chivda and other Diwali snack mixtures.

• Besan, rice flour, oil, turmeric, red chilli powder, ajwain, asafoetida and salt

Some recipes add a bit of rice flour to make their sev a little crispy, and the dough is quite simple to make as the spices are mostly powder. Once the dough forms, which is stiff, the sancha is greased and readied as the oil heats, and then the dough is pushed through it and fried. Like chivda is cooks really quickly, and needs to be taken out soon. It is the perfect snack to use for a variety of chaat items and also a standalone snack.

8. Anarase

Anarase is the slow faral, made with soaked rice, which is soaked for about three days with the water changed daily, then dried, ground and mixed with jaggery. Some recipes might extend this to a whopping seven days to get the best flavour. It is cooked as a rice-and-jaggery disc coated in poppy seeds.

• Rice, jaggery, poppy seeds and ghee

This faral is crispy on the outside and soft on the inside, with a chew to it and the poppy seeds coat it on the outside. The patience needed for this Diwali faral is what makes it such a joy to have among other sweets and snacks. As they are fried in ghee, they tend to be quite rich and can be enjoyed with your light beverages to offset their richness. 

The Common Ingredients Across Faral

Whichever faral dishes you choose for Diwali 2026, some pantry staples keep returning and can make your choice easier during this busy festive period.

• Ghee and hot oil: worked into the dough of chakali, chirote, bhakarwadi, sev and shankarpale, and used to fry almost everything.

• Rice and pulses: bhajani for chakali, soaked rice for anarse, poha and roasted chana dal in chivda.

• Besan: the base of sev and part of the bhakarwadi dough.

• Maida and rava: the shells and doughs of karanji, shankarpale, chirote and bhakarwadi.

• Poppy seeds and coconut: the karanji filling, the anarse coating and the bhakarwadi filling. Coconut, a coastal staple, also turns up as slices in chivda.

• Sugar, jaggery and cardamom: the sweetening and flavouring across karanji, anarse, shankarpale and chirote.

• Dry-roasting: the shared first step for bhajani, poha, coconut, sesame and poppy seeds, which brings out flavour and drives off excess moisture.

Faral Vs Other Regional Diwali Snacks

Other regions also fry snacks and make festive sweets, so the difference lies in a few specific techniques, ingredients and their resulting taste. The mix of roasted flours, poppy seeds and sugar kneaded into dough makes Maharashtrian faral easy to spot on any table.

• A balanced plate: savoury chakali, sev and chivda share the plate with sweet karanji, anarse and chirote, and bhakarwadi sits in between with its sweet, spicy filling.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                

• Bhajani: roasted multigrain flour is what separates Maharashtrian chakali from murukku or chakri.

• The saran: karanji has cousins across India, but the Maharashtrian one is known for its dry coconut and poppy seed filling.

• Sugar inside the dough: sweet shankarpale is sweetened in the dough rather than coated afterwards.

• Slow methods: anarse asks for days of soaking before a single disc is fried.

• Exchange as ritual: swapping homemade plates is not unique to Maharashtra, since Bengal has a similar post-Durga Puja habit of visiting with homemade nimki, but faral is tied to Diwali.