Kansar

Kansar (કંસાર) is a Gujarati sweet made by cooking coarsely ground wheat and finishing it with ghee and sugar. It looks like a mass of fine granules and is served in a dish rather than cut into pieces. It is one of the wheat sweets prepared for weddings and family celebrations.

How finely to grind the wheat

A coarser grind is chosen over the fine flour used for thin flatbreads. Water is added to flour that has been rubbed with fat, and it is then steamed or cooked in a pan until it can be broken apart. In some methods, the cooked dough is broken up finely, and melted ghee and powdered sugar are added at the time of eating.

For example, one method is to dissolve jaggery in water, bring it to a boil, add coarse flour that has been rubbed with ghee, and cook it through. Ghee or powdered sugar may be added at the end, and the stage at which the sugar is added changes how the sweetness comes through. Coarse flour is used because the cooked wheat is broken apart and eaten loose rather than formed into a smooth mass.

Ghee in a container. Photo: Neha Sonal, 2015; location unknown. Original image used (Source, CC BY-SA 4.0).

Among Gujarati households living in East Africa, there is also a method that uses semolina instead of coarse wheat flour, steaming it and breaking it apart. In some cases, ghee and sugar are served on the side so that each person can add them to taste.

Overlap with the name lapsi

In some regions, kansar is also known as lapsi or lapsee. On the other hand, versions made with fada, cracked wheat grains, are distinguished as fada lapsi. Coarse flour and cracked grains that keep their shape are not the same thing. Even though both use wheat, ghee, and sugar, the size of the grains you feel in your mouth and how the sweet holds together are different.

Cracked wheat grains. Photo: Sanjay Acharya, 2006; location unknown. Original image used (Source, CC BY-SA 3.0).

The distinction between flour-based lapsi, popular in Saurashtra, and fada lapsi made from cracked grains also lives on in household memory. However, the names are not used consistently, and the name kansar alone does not determine a single coarseness of flour or cooking method.

Kansar offered to a goddess

Jivantika Adya Sthan in Rajkot advises that kansar or lapsi made with sugar be offered in worship of the goddess Jivantika, to whom people pray for children’s health and well-being. According to the practice this organization describes, people pray on Fridays in the month of Shravana and partake of the offered kansar before the goddess’s image. Sweet wheat appears not only at weddings but also in family prayers.

A bite shared at a wedding

In one example from weddings in Gujarati households, there is a custom in which the bride’s mother brings kansar served on a plate and the bride and groom feed it to each other. It is a moment celebrating the couple’s bond, as the first meal the newlyweds share. Wheat, which is also an everyday staple, is layered with ghee and sweetness and served as a celebratory dish.

Family memories are also passed down of sugar being sprinkled over warm kansar, which was then rolled by hand and given to children. Besides being served on a plate, it is a sweet that is sometimes shaped by hand and shared.

Glossary