Til and gur at Sankranti, the way our village makes it
Traditions · 12 August 2026
In our part of Uttar Pradesh, Makar Sankranti arrives at the same moment as the jaggery season. The cane is in, the kadhais are working, and the first gur of the year goes straight into til laddoo. The timing is not a coincidence. The festival sits exactly where the harvest does.
Why til and gur together
They are the two things a north Indian village has plenty of in January, and they behave well together: warm gur binds toasted sesame into a ball that holds without anything else added. There is a saying exchanged with the sweets (take this, speak sweetly), and the sweet itself is the whole gesture.
The laddoo, roughly
Dry-roast white sesame in a heavy pan on low heat until the seeds turn a shade darker and start to pop. Take them off and let them cool a little.
In the same pan, melt jaggery with a spoon of water on low heat until it is smooth and just beginning to bubble. Do not let it boil hard or it will set brittle instead of chewy.
Take the pan off the heat, fold in the sesame, and let it sit for a minute, hot enough to shape and cool enough to touch. Grease your palms and roll. They firm up as they cool.
A note on the format
For laddoo, either our cubes or our powder works. Cubes melt down cleanly; the powder melts faster and is easier to measure. What matters more is not boiling the jaggery too hard, which is the single thing that turns a soft laddoo into a hard one.