At Chhath, thekua gets most of the attention. Beside it in the soop, there is often a plainer sweet: kasar laddoo.
Made from very little
Kasar is made by roasting rice flour until it smells nutty, then binding it with jaggery and ghee. The warm mixture is rolled into laddoos by hand, quickly, before it cools.
A sweet for the offering
Because it’s simple, it fits the care many families take for Chhath: clean ingredients, clean hands, nothing tasted before the offering. Kasar laddoos are offered to the Sun with the other prasad and shared afterwards.
At home
Outside Chhath, kasar is the kind of sweet made at home without a recipe, one handful of this and one of that, the way it was always done.