No-Cook Sweets

Quick mithai with little or no stovetop time.

No-cook mithai lean on ingredients that are already cooked or concentrated: sweetened condensed milk, milk powder, desiccated coconut, dates and nuts. Most of the work is mixing and shaping, with a few minutes of warming at most. Nearly everything you need is in an ordinary supermarket, which makes these the easiest place to start and the quickest to turn out when a festival sneaks up on you.

Round dark-brown dry fruit ladoo studded with nut pieces, piled on a pale ceramic plate on a wooden board 20 min
No-Cook Sweets

Dry Fruit Ladoo (No Sugar, No Cooking)

Dates, nuts and seeds ground to a sticky paste in the food processor and rolled, no stove involved.
Sliced coins of a date and nut log showing flecks of green pistachio, arranged in a fan on a pale ceramic plate 25 min
No-Cook Sweets

Dry Fruit Roll (Nut and Date Log)

A no-cook date and nut log that chills firm, then slices into neat coins like a mithai salami.
Dark brown fig roll sliced into rounds showing a bright green pistachio centre, arranged on a pale ceramic plate 40 min
No-Cook Sweets

Anjeer Roll (Dried Fig Roll) with Pistachio Centre

Dried figs are simmered soft, blitzed to a dark paste, and rolled around a pistachio core that stays whole when sliced.
Dark date barfi squares studded with pistachio and almond, stacked on a pale speckled plate 32 min
No-Cook Sweets

Khajur Barfi (No-Sugar Date Barfi)

A dense, chewy date-and-nut barfi that sets firm from the dates' own stickiness, with no sugar or khoya at all.
White coconut ladoo rolled in desiccated coconut on a cream ceramic plate 20 min
No-Cook Sweets

3-Ingredient Coconut Ladoo (Condensed Milk Coconut Ladoo)

A no-thermometer coconut ladoo made with condensed milk and desiccated coconut, done start to finish in about 20 minutes.