Homemade Weight Gain Shake Recipes and Laddoos, With Calorie Counts

“Add dry fruits and milk” is not a recipe. A homemade weight gain shake only helps if you know it’s about 400 kcal and not 180, and a laddoo only earns its place on a gain plan if you know one is 200 kcal and four is a whole meal. Every recipe below is measured in grams and spoons, with its calories as an honest range, so you can slot it into the day on purpose.

One thing before the blender

If you’re thin because you’re losing weight without trying, a shake covers the symptom and hides the cause. Thyroid disease, diabetes, TB, coeliac, gut infections, depression and eating disorders all present as “can’t gain weight”, and each is found by a cheap test or a conversation with a doctor. Get that done first, or at least alongside. The signs are listed in our weight red-flags guide. Once the cause is known or ruled out, these recipes are the easiest part of the surplus described in the series’ honest underweight plan for adults.

Shake one: banana, doodh and peanut butter, about 400 kcal

This is the workhorse. Two minutes, tastes like a milkshake, costs less than a scoop of any gainer, and it only works with full-cream milk because skimmed cuts the calories by a third and defeats the point. Smooth peanut butter with no added sugar is fine, and so is 2 tablespoons of roasted, skinned peanuts blitzed first if you don’t buy the jar. The peanut guide explains why stale or mouldy peanuts must go in the bin, not the blender.

1. Pour 250 ml (one full glass) of full-cream doodh into the blender, cold or room temperature.
2. Add 1 medium ripe kela (about 100 g peeled), broken into pieces. Brown speckles on the skin mean sweeter and easier to blend.
3. Add 1 tablespoon (about 16 g) of peanut butter, or 2 tablespoons of roasted peanuts.
4. Add 2 pitted khajoor (about 14 g). Soak them in 2 tablespoons of hot water for 5 minutes if they’re hard.
5. Blend for 30 to 40 seconds until no date flecks remain. Drink at once; banana browns and separates within an hour.

Totals: milk roughly 150 to 165 kcal, banana 90 to 110, peanut butter about 95, dates 40 to 45. That’s a shake of about 375 to 415 kcal with 13 to 15 g of protein. Have it mid-morning, or as the evening snack an hour before dinner if your appetite can take it.

Shake two: badam and sattu, about 600 to 650 kcal

Same base, more work in it. Sattu (roasted chana flour) is the cheapest protein-and-calorie powder in the country and the traditional answer to “he needs building up”. If you don’t have it, 2 tablespoons of oats do a similar job. The sattu sharbat guide covers buying fresh sattu and the salty daytime version.

1. Make shake one exactly as above.
2. Add a second tablespoon (16 g) of peanut butter.
3. Add 8 badam (about 10 g), soaked overnight and skinned if you like the texture, or dry if you don’t mind flecks.
4. Add 2 level tablespoons (about 20 g) of sattu or oats.
5. Blend a full minute; sattu needs it or it settles. Add 50 ml more milk if it’s too thick to drink.

Totals: shake one plus roughly 95 for the second spoon of peanut butter, 55 to 60 for the badam, and 70 to 80 for the sattu. About 600 to 650 kcal, with protein near 22 to 25 g. This one is a real snack, not a sip with chai; give it its own slot, usually mid-morning on a day you’ll also eat a full lunch.

Shake three: the khajoor doodh gainer, about 750 to 850 kcal

This is the one for a man with a big surplus to fill and a small appetite, or anyone rebuilding weight after a long illness with a doctor’s blessing. It’s a meal’s worth of energy in a glass. Treat it as one: sip it over 15 to 20 minutes, and don’t stack it on top of shake two the same day.

1. Pour 350 ml full-cream doodh into the blender.
2. Add 1 medium kela, 4 pitted khajoor (about 28 g) and 10 badam (about 12 g).
3. Add 2 tablespoons (32 g) of peanut butter and 3 level tablespoons (about 30 g) of sattu or oats.
4. Add a pinch of elaichi powder or a few strands of zafran soaked in a spoon of warm milk if you want it to taste like something a grandmother made.
5. Blend 60 to 90 seconds. Pour, let it stand 2 minutes so the foam settles, and drink over a quarter of an hour.

Totals: milk about 210 to 230 kcal, banana 90 to 110, dates 85 to 95, badam 70 to 80, peanut butter about 190, sattu or oats 105 to 115. Call it 750 to 850 kcal with around 30 g of protein. If it sits too heavily, split it: half at 11am, half at 4pm.

Laddoos, with the calories per piece

A laddoo is calories in a pocket. Exactly what a person trying to gain needs, exactly what a person trying to lose doesn’t, and the two recipes below are sized so that one piece is a known number rather than a guess.

Besan laddoo, roughly 180 to 220 kcal each

1. Melt 100 g desi ghee in a heavy kadhai on low heat. Add 200 g besan (the coarse “laddoo besan” if you can get it).
2. Roast on low, stirring constantly, for 15 to 20 minutes. It will loosen, smell nutty and turn a shade darker. Pale and floury means underdone; it will taste raw.
3. Take it off the heat and let it cool until just warm to the touch, about 10 minutes. Sugar added to hot besan melts and the laddoos won’t hold.
4. Mix in 100 g boora or powdered sugar and 1 teaspoon elaichi powder. Optionally 2 tablespoons chopped badam.
5. Press into 10 balls of about 40 g each. Keep in an airtight tin for up to 2 weeks at room temperature.

The whole batch is roughly 2,000 kcal: besan about 740, ghee about 900, sugar about 400. Ten laddoos makes each one 180 to 220 kcal. One with evening chai is a snack; two is most of a meal. The besan guide covers buying fresh flour, which matters because stale besan tastes bitter after roasting.

Khajoor and dry fruit laddoo, roughly 100 to 120 kcal each, no added sugar

1. Pit 200 g soft khajoor. If they’re the hard chuhara-like kind, steam them 5 minutes first.
2. Dry-roast 50 g badam and 50 g akhrot in a pan for 4 to 5 minutes until fragrant, cool, and chop roughly.
3. Warm 1 tablespoon ghee in the same pan, add the dates, and mash with a spatula on low heat for 3 to 4 minutes until they form a soft paste.
4. Stir in the nuts and 1 tablespoon til. Turn off the heat.
5. When cool enough to handle, roll into 12 balls of 25 to 30 g. Refrigerate; they keep 3 weeks.

Batch total is roughly 1,300 to 1,400 kcal: dates about 560, badam about 290, akhrot about 330, ghee about 120, til about 50. Twelve pieces gives 100 to 120 kcal each, so two make a snack. Because there’s no added sugar these are the gentler choice, though the dates still count as sugar for anyone with diabetes. See the khajoor guide for choosing soft dates that mash well.

Where gond laddoo fits

Gond (edible gum) laddoos are the traditional winter and post-partum “strength” sweet: ghee, atta, nuts and gur in a dense ball, around 180 to 220 kcal per 40 g piece. The full recipe, including how to fry gond so it puffs rather than burns, is in our gond ke laddu guide. One a day with milk is the sensible amount.

Fitting them into the day

In the gaps. Never in place of roti and salan. The point is to add roughly 300 to 500 kcal a day on top of proper meals, which gives most adults 0.25 to 0.5 kg a week, so a lean woman might take shake one mid-morning and a besan laddoo with evening chai, while a lean man with a bigger gap might take shake two in the morning and two date laddoos with milk at night. Weigh in weekly. Let the scale decide whether the snack goes up a size. The whole Desi Weight Gain series runs on that rule.