From the YummyYucky team, founded by Nancy Nash

🥣

Can Babies Eat Kheer? Yes, Unsweetened, From 6 Months

A plain, unsweetened, home made kheer works from about 6 months, because milk cooked into food is fine long before milk as a drink is. The parts to deal with are the ones nobody expects: the sugar and condensed milk in a festival version, the chopped nuts on top, the wheat in a vermicelli kheer, and the silver leaf.

Log kheer today →

Free, no account needed. Takes about 10 seconds.

When to introduce: From about 6 months for a plain, unsweetened, nut free version you cook yourself, with the sweetened festival one as a taste after age 2.
Common allergen?: Contains milk, one of the common allergens. Traditional kheer is finished with almonds, pistachios or cashews, which brings in tree nuts, and a vermicelli kheer or a sheer khurma is built on wheat sewai.
Texture: Well cooked rice collapsed into thickened milk, blended smooth for a new eater and left lumpier as chewing improves.
Key nutrients: Calcium, protein and fat from the milk, and energy from the rice. Low in iron, so it belongs next to an iron rich food rather than in place of one.

Yes, and this one surprises people. The rule everyone remembers is no cow's milk before 12 months, and it is only half right. The NHS puts it plainly: cow's milk can be used in cooking or mixed with food from around 6 months, it just should not be the main drink until a baby is 12 months old⁵. Kheer is milk cooked into food. That makes a plain, unsweetened, home made kheer one of the easiest things to put in front of a 6 month old at Diwali or Janmashtami, or as payasam at an Onam sadya, and one of the few holiday dishes that needs almost no adapting. What does need dealing with is the sugar, because a festival kheer is often condensed milk on top of sugar, and the slivered almonds, chopped pistachios and cashews scattered over the top, which are a choking hazard until about age 5.

Prep School: how to prepare kheer for baby-led weaning (BLW) and purées

🍴 Baby-led weaning

Around 6 monthsMake a small pan of your own. Cook rice in whole milk until the grains have collapsed and the whole thing is thick and soft, with no sugar, jaggery, condensed milk or honey at all; honey must not be given to a child under 12 months in any form. Blend or mash it smooth and leave it thick enough to cling to a spoon, then preload the spoon and hand it to your baby. A pinch of cardamom is fine and is most of the point of kheer, so do not leave it out. Let it cool until it is barely warm and test it on the inside of your wrist, because kheer holds heat much longer than it looks like it does.

6 to 9 monthsLeave more texture in it. Preload a spoon and hand it over, or make it thick enough for your baby to scoop with a fist. If you want it sweeter, mash in ripe banana or stir through a little date puree instead of sugar. Ground almond or ground pistachio can go in from 6 months and is a genuinely good addition, stirred in rather than sprinkled on top; slivered, chopped or whole nuts cannot.

9 to 12 monthsSoftly cooked whole grains are fine now, so you can stop blending and let your baby scoop the soft rice with their hands or a preloaded spoon. Vermicelli kheer, sewai, works too if you cook the strands until they are very soft and snip them short, since long strands are awkward for a new eater to manage. Sewai is wheat, so treat that bowl as a wheat food as well as a milk one. Still no added sugar.

12 to 24 monthsKeep serving your own unsweetened pan, now at the family texture for your toddler to eat with their own spoon, and give them a bowl of that at the festival while everyone else has the family kheer. Added sugar is still not recommended under 2, so the sweetened festival kheer, often sugar and condensed milk together, waits until after their second birthday. Then it is a holiday taste rather than a nightly dessert, with the nuts and the silver leaf scraped off first, since slivers, chopped pieces and whole nuts are a choking hazard until about age 5.

🥄 Purées

Around 6 monthsMake a small pan of your own. Cook rice in whole milk until the grains have collapsed and the whole thing is thick and soft, with no sugar, jaggery, condensed milk or honey at all; honey must not be given to a child under 12 months in any form. Blend or mash it smooth, then loosen it with a little more milk until it drops off a spoon. A pinch of cardamom is fine and is most of the point of kheer, so do not leave it out. Let it cool until it is barely warm and test it on the inside of your wrist, because kheer holds heat much longer than it looks like it does.

6 to 9 monthsLeave more texture in it: mash rather than blend, so a few soft lumps of rice stay in each spoonful. If you want it sweeter, mash in ripe banana or stir through a little date puree instead of sugar. Ground almond or ground pistachio can go in from 6 months and is a genuinely good addition, stirred in rather than sprinkled on top; slivered, chopped or whole nuts cannot.

9 to 12 monthsSoftly cooked whole grains are fine now, so the rice can go on the spoon whole and soft rather than blended. Vermicelli kheer, sewai, works too if you cook the strands until they are very soft and snip them short, since long strands are awkward for a new eater to manage. Sewai is wheat, so treat that bowl as a wheat food as well as a milk one. Still no added sugar.

12 to 24 monthsKeep serving your own unsweetened pan, on the spoon at the family texture, and give your toddler a bowl of that at the festival while everyone else has the family kheer. Added sugar is still not recommended under 2, so the sweetened festival kheer, often sugar and condensed milk together, waits until after their second birthday. Then it is a holiday taste rather than a nightly dessert, with the nuts and the silver leaf scraped off first, since slivers, chopped pieces and whole nuts are a choking hazard until about age 5.

🍪 A creamy sweet bowl they can have →

Is kheer safe? Choking & prep

Four things, and only one of them is the one people worry about. First, sugar. Festival kheer is sweetened hard, often with sugar and condensed milk together, and the CDC is blunt that infants and young children should not have added sugars, and that children younger than 24 months should not have them at all¹. That is the reason to keep your own unsweetened pan going: the sweet version waits until after age 2, and then it stays occasional. Second, the nuts. Kheer is traditionally finished with slivered almonds, chopped pistachios or cashews, and the AAP says plainly not to feed whole peanuts or tree nuts to babies or young children because they are choking hazards³, while the NHS holds whole nuts back until age 5². Ground nuts and thinned nut butters stirred into the pudding are fine from 6 months and are a useful way to keep tree nuts in your baby's regular rotation. Scrape a sprinkled top off before the bowl reaches a baby. Third, honey. Some cooks sweeten kheer with honey instead of sugar, and honey must not be given to a child under 12 months in any form, because it can carry the spores that cause infant botulism and cooking does not reliably destroy them⁴. If you did not make it, ask. Fourth, wheat. Sewai or vermicelli kheer, and the sheer khurma made for Eid al-Fitr, are built on wheat vermicelli, so that bowl is a wheat food as well as a milk one. There is no reason to hold wheat back, but it helps to know which allergen you are actually introducing. On cow's milk, the confusion is worth clearing up because it stops a lot of parents offering a perfectly good food: cow's milk can be used in cooking or mixed with food from around 6 months, it just should not be the main drink before 12 months⁵. Last, the silver leaf. Vark on a festival kheer is decoration rather than food and it gives your baby nothing they need, so peel or scrape it off before the bowl goes down.

Trying kheer today? Log the first taste and whether it was a hit, a hard maybe, or launched across the room, dated and ready for the pediatrician.

Log kheer today →

Free, no account needed. Takes about 10 seconds.

Nutrition

Kheer is a milk dish first and a rice dish second, and that is mostly good news. Whole milk brings calcium, protein and the fat a baby genuinely needs, and simmering it down concentrates all three. The rice is energy. What kheer is not is an iron food, and iron is the nutrient most likely to run short between 6 and 12 months, so serve it alongside something iron rich rather than as a meal on its own. Ground almond or ground pistachio stirred in adds fat, a little protein and, usefully, keeps tree nuts in the rotation at the age when regular exposure matters most. The version served at a festival is a different food nutritionally, because the sugar and the condensed milk change the balance completely.

Goes well with

Mango, mashed or as aamras, stirred through at the end · Banana, mashed in for sweetness instead of sugar · Dates (puree), a spoonful at a time for older babies · Moong dal, served earlier in the meal for the iron and protein kheer is missing · Pistachio (ground), stirred in rather than sprinkled on top · Semolina porridge, if you want the same idea without rice

Storage & freezing

Kheer is cooked milk and cooked rice, and the rice sets the limit. Cool it quickly, cover it and get it into the fridge within an hour, then use it within 24 hours.⁶ It sets hard in the fridge, so loosen it with a splash of milk when you reheat. Reheat once only, stirring, until it is steaming through, then cool it properly before serving, because a pudding that feels lukewarm on top can still be very hot underneath. Kheer freezes acceptably for 1 to 2 months,⁷ but the texture turns grainy, so freeze it in small portions and expect to blend it again. Throw out anything your baby has already had a spoon in, because backwash into a dairy dish is how a safe bowl stops being safe.

More dairy foods to explore

🧀

ManchegoAround 6 months

🧀

MascarponeAround 6 months, small amounts stirred in

🧀

Monterey jackFrom around 6 months

🧀

MozzarellaAround 6 months

🧀

MuensterAround 6 months

🧈

Khoya6 months+, plain and in small amounts

Introducing this allergen

Common questions

Can my baby have kheer at Diwali?

Yes, if it is your own unsweetened pan. The festival version is usually heavy on sugar or condensed milk and topped with chopped nuts, so for a baby under 2 the better move is to bring a small bowl of plain kheer and put it in front of them when everyone else gets theirs.

Is kheer safe before 12 months if it is made with cow's milk?

Yes. The no cow's milk before 12 months rule is about milk as a drink. The NHS says cow's milk can be used in cooking or mixed into food from around 6 months, and kheer is milk cooked into food, so a plain unsweetened version is fine from about 6 months.

Can babies eat the nuts in kheer?

Not as slivers, chopped pieces or whole nuts. Those are a choking hazard until about age 5. Ground almond, ground pistachio or a thinned nut butter stirred into the pudding is fine from 6 months and is a good way to keep tree nuts in your baby's regular rotation.

Is sheer khurma safe for my baby at Eid?

The milk part is, the rest needs work. Sheer khurma is sewai, which is wheat vermicelli, simmered in sweetened milk with dates and a lot of nuts. Cook the strands very soft, snip them short, skip the sugar in your baby's bowl and scrape the nuts off. Treat it as a wheat introduction as well as a milk one if wheat is new.

What do I give my baby instead of kheer at a festival?

Make a tiny pan of unsweetened kheer at home and bring it. If you have not, plain whole milk yogurt with mashed mango or banana stirred through looks and tastes close enough that your baby is still having the sweet course with everyone else.

My mother-in-law already gave my baby kheer with nuts on top. What should I do?

Stay calm and look at your baby. If they are coughing, stay close and let them cough, because that is how they clear it themselves. If your baby is choking, start first aid right away. If someone is with you, have them call 911 while you start. If you are alone, shout for help and start first aid at once. If they seem fine, sit them upright and look in their mouth for any piece of nut, and take out only what you can clearly see, never a blind finger sweep. Then stay with them. A spoonful of sweet kheer is not going to cause harm on its own. For next time, one short sentence does it: she has her own bowl, and the sweet kheer can wait until she is 2.

Is the silver leaf on kheer safe for a baby?

Silver leaf, vark, is decoration rather than food and it gives your baby nothing they need, so scrape or peel it off before serving. It is not worth eating even if it is harmless.

Can I sweeten kheer with honey for my baby?

Not before 12 months, under any circumstances. Honey can carry the spores that cause infant botulism and cooking does not reliably destroy them. Mashed banana, date puree or stewed mango sweeten kheer perfectly well and are safe from 6 months.

How much sugar is too much in kheer for a baby?

For a child under 2 the guidance is no added sugars at all, so the honest answer is that a sweetened kheer is a holiday taste rather than a regular food. Keep your own unsweetened pan as the everyday version and there is no calculation to do.

Sources

Track it in YummyYucky

Log first tries and reactions, with an automatic allergen tracker when a food needs one, all in one place you can share with your pediatrician.

Start tracking for free

Last updated November 2026. Next review February 2027. How we write these: built from current published guidance from the AAP, CDC, FDA/EPA, NIAID, WHO, and other pediatric and public-health authorities, with sources cited on the page. See our editorial and medical policy for how we research, source, and update these, and how we double-check the food advice.

This is general information, not medical advice, and is not individualized for your baby. Always talk to your pediatrician about your baby's diet, introducing allergens, and any reaction. In an emergency, contact emergency services.

Some links in our guides are affiliate links: if you buy through them we may earn a small commission, at no extra cost to you. We only suggest things we'd actually use, and it never changes our guidance.