Explore Diwali with a family through the sweets! Create playful hands-on fun using Diwali cardamom scented playdough to create your own pretend play versions of Diwali Sweets.
Plus discover some of our favorite Diwali books for Kids.
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One tradition of Diwali is to share Indian sweets with your family and friends to celebrate the occasion. Bringing this to life in playtime, here’s a fun idea for how to make playdough indian sweets with a special ingredient…. cardamom.
Diwali Playdough Ideas for Indian Sweets
Even in the UK when we visited there was this one amazing shop that made the best jilabi I have ever tasted. Here’s a recipe for it from Manjela’s kitchen.
Although I would love to eat Indian sweets all the time they are pretty sweet. Fortunately, we found a fun way to recreate the sweets at our house every day.
My daughter created her own sweet shop for Diwali using Playdough.
We had so much fun creating Jilabi with our Playdough. It was leftover from our Pumpkin Pie Scented Playdough so it was just the right orange color and then it inspired us to make some more Indian sweets.
Here’s a few other scented playdough recipes we’ve used…
Cardamom Scented Playdough for Diwali
We created an indian sweet called Burfi too. This is our favorite since we added green Cardamom pods.
This traditional spice is used in India and is probably my most favorite scent ever!
In Hindi it’s called elachi.
We used my spice grinder, mortar and pestle from India actually, to make the pods break and the seeds become powder like. If you’ve never ground up your own spices there’s something very magical about it! First we made a batch of playdough together. Then we added the ground up cardamom.
If you’re looking for a good playdough recipes go to Nurturestore, she has so many great ideas!
Then it was time to make some Indian sweets for the sweet shop! You can flatten the playdough and have fun making diamonds.
We even added aluminum foil to look like the real edible flakes they put on Indian sweets.
Here’s our finished sweet tray ready for delivery!
Here’s our sweet tray! We made some PlayDiyas with the same cardamom scented playdough too!
Celebrating Diwali with Sweets
I’ve had the opportunity to celebrate Diwali with my husband and his family for the past 10 years. One tradition is that you share Sweets, Dried Fruits Nuts with your family and friends.
I’ll never forget the Haldirams stores in India when you visit. They have a display of sweets that is probably 25 feet long with an assortment of colors, shapes and tastes.
Take a peek at what it looks like as you go in. Here’s one family’s experience.
Here’s an image of sweets being sold at the market in India.
Photo source National Geographic
Diwali Sweets Recipes
Some of the more common sweets exchanged and served for Diwali are
Each of the Indian sweets are linked to a recipe so you can make at home to create these special treats.
Diwali Sweets Online
Here’s some Indian Sweets available on Amazon to try out or at your local Indian Store.
Books About Celebrating Diwali
Here are a few books we’d recommend about the Sweets In India.
Want to learn more about Diwali, check out these Diwali books!
Here are some more ideas for creating your Diyas for Diwali which are lit the night on Diwali all over the exterior of homes in India. We even have some printables about Diwali
You may also enjoy these activity ideas about Diwali and India for your child…
