Calories in Peanut Chikki

The recipe melts 100 g of jaggery, stirs in 50 g of roasted peanuts with half a teaspoon of ghee, rolls the mixture thin and breaks it into 8 pieces. One piece therefore has 6 g of peanuts and 12 g of jaggery, a thin square that weighs very little. This is why it is the lightest of the 20 sweets in the set. Two things should be kept in mind. A packet bar or a thick slab from a chikki shop is larger than this piece. And this recipe has more jaggery than peanuts, whereas many chikkis are packed with nuts and so carry more fat and protein in each piece.

Carbohydrate supplies 60% of the energy, fat 31% and protein 9%. Nearly all the carbohydrate is jaggery: 10.8 g of the 11.7 g is counted as sugars. The 2.7 g of fat is the peanut's own oil. With 6 g of peanuts in a piece, the protein is 1.7 g, the lowest of any sweet in the set. In this recipe, then, chikki is mainly a jaggery sweet with peanuts in it, not a peanut snack held together by a little jaggery.

A thin piece of chikki is about 4% of a sedentary man's daily energy requirement and 5% of a woman's, the smallest share of any sweet in the set. Two pieces are 158 kcal and three are 237 kcal, with 5.1 g of protein in the three. Chikki is hard, sweet and easy to keep eating, and a packet rarely stops at one piece. As a winter snack after lunch or on a journey, a piece or two is a small amount of energy. It is not a protein snack in this form; a handful of plain roasted peanuts does that job with no added sugar.

The figure to notice is sugar: 10.8 g of sugars in a 79 kcal piece, against 2.7 g of fat. Chikki is sticky and hard, which matters for teeth and for anyone with dental work. Peanuts are a common allergen, so it should not be handed to children whose allergy status is unknown. People with diabetes should check with their doctor or dietitian, since jaggery raises blood sugar as sugar does.