Vinayaka Chathurthi Celebration

Vinayaka Chathurthi also known as Ganesh Chaturthi is the Hindu festival celebrating the birthday of Lord Ganesha, the elephant - headed son of Shiva and Parvathi. Ganesha is the cutest god who is worshipped as the god of wisdom, prosperity and good fortune.

At home we used to celebrate this festival in a very grand manner by arranging a big array of Ganeshas and performing pooja to them. This year we had place 110 Ganeshas in our pooja.

According to our custom, we used to first perform a special pooja for Parvathi Devi by reciting slokas and praying for all goodness. A set of 16 threads with 16 knots would be tied around the right wrist during this pooja.

Then follows the Vinayaka chathurthi pooja. Chanting of various ashtothrams and concerned slokas go on followed by offering of neivithyam to the lord.

This year we made two types of Kolukattai namely the Cashew(mundhiri) kolukattai and Sesame(Yellu) Kolukattai as well as the famous Coconut modak.

I have the recipes of the kolukattais(Sweet dumplings) posted in my last year celebration over here.

Recipe for Coconut Modak Filling

Ingredients:

Coconut scrapping - 1 cup
Jaggery - 1 cup
Cardamom powder - a pinch

Method:

Take the scrapped coconut and jaggery in a pan and heat them until the jaggery melts and combines well with the coconut. Add the cardamom powder and some broken cashews to it and mix well.

Remove from flame and use it as the filling for making modak.

Use the modak mould if you have one, else make cup shape with the white dough and fill it with one tsp of the filling and close it carefully with the white dough.

Steam cook them for ten mins.

Yummy and beautiful looking modak is ready to serve. :)

Happy making. :)

Look out for the white dough recipe here.

Step-wise procedure of making Kolukattai(Sweet dumpling)

Wish you all a very happy Vinayaka Chathurthi :)

Written by: Nithya
Send in your queries by clicking here.