Kasar (also kasaar) is a hand-shaped sweet of roasted rice flour bound with powdered jaggery, perfumed with fennel and bound with ghee. It belongs to the cluster of homemade offerings — alongside thekua, khajuria and tikri — prepared in the days before Chhath and arranged in bamboo baskets for the sun offering, and is prized in winter for its warming, sustaining quality.
To make it, fine rice flour is dry-roasted, mixed with crushed jaggery, ghee and fennel, then sprinkled with a little milk and pressed by hand into firm round laddus. Because it carries little moisture, kasar keeps for many days — a practical virtue for a prasad that must be made ahead and carried to the riverbank. For many Maithil families it is the homely companion to thekua on the Chhath thali.
