About 5 years ago I took a couple of months unpaid leave from work and went to Jaipur to teach English to children living in the slums.

It was a fantastic experience working in another country, if at times bewildering, as I was never entirely sure what was happening from one day to the next - teaching the entire school to sing Jingle Bells in assembly or a class of teenagers how to use superlatives.

One thing though was a given: at 3pm every day a small boy from a stall down the road would bring chai for all the teachers. Thick, creamy, spicy, super sweet, blisteringly hot, served in tiny disposable cups. Nothing in the world could have hit the spot more, and now when I drink chai it takes me back to sitting in the school hall with the other teachers marking books and drinking tea.

I've always loved tea loaf and wanted to add those chai spices. This is quite a dense, moist tea loaf and delicious either on its own or spread with butter. You can easily get chai tea bags in supermarkets now - they won't replicate my 3pm experience but they will help create plump spiced sultanas.

Ingredients:

Loaf:
350g sultanas
50g demerara sugar
50g dark muscavado sugar
150ml cold black chai tea
225g self-raising flour
2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground ginger
Half tsp nutmeg
2 cloves
Seeds of 3 cardamom pods
3 black peppercorns
1 medium egg, beaten
110g glace cherries halved
50g chopped pistachios

Topping:
20g very soft unsalted butter
50g demerara sugar
20g icing sugar
Half tsp vanilla extract
 

How to make it:

1. Put the dried fruit, both sugars and the tea into a bowl, stir and leave overnight. The fruit will soak up the liquid and the spicy flavours of the tea.

2. Pre-heat the oven to 180ºC/gas 4. 

3. Grease a loaf tin and line it with baking paper.

4. Grind the cloves, pepper and cardamom to a very  fine powder with a pestle and mortar.

5. Mix the flour, spices, egg and fruit together till totally combined. Stir through the cherries and pistachios.

6. Put the mixture into the loaf tin and push it  carefully into the corners with a spoon making sure the top is even.

7. Put it in the oven for 30mins or until a  cocktail stick comes out clean.

8. Put all the topping ingredients into a bowl and mix.

9. Once the cake is cooked and still in the tin, take spoonfuls of the topping and spread onto the cake while it's still hot. It will form a thin crunchy crust on the cake.

10. Leave the cake to cool and the topping to set for about 10mins then remove from the tin carefully and place on a cooling rack.

School dinners. They get a lot of bad press but I have very fond memories of my primary school meals.

My favourites were mince beef and onion pie (make sure you get the corner bit), homemade crisps, chocolate sponge with pink custard and semolina with jam. I think that last one might just be me.

But most of all what I hoped for was Manchester Tart. Well, at that time I didn't know that was what it was called, it was just jam and custard tart. It took another 30 years before I realised it had a proper name. I'd wanted to make it since then, but could it live up to the version at St Bartholomew's Primary School that the 8 year old me enjoyed so much?

These turned out even better than I remembered. I used creme patisserie to give a lightness and added some fresh raspberries to add a tang against the sweetness.

The pastry needs to be crisp, so use sweet pastry and don't roll it too thick. On the other hand, don't roll it too thin or it won't be strong enough to hold the contents. I used shop bought but if you've got the time (and the inclination) feel free to make your own.

Ingredients:

375g ready made sweet pastry
4 tbsp seedless raspberry jam
125g fresh raspberries
4 egg yolks
100g golden caster sugar
25g plain flour
1 vanilla pod
350ml whole milk
Desicated coconut

How to make them:

1. Remove the pastry from the fridge 30 mins before you start.

2. Pre-heat the oven to 180C/gas 4.

3. Grease a 12-hole muffin tin with butter.

4. Roll the pastry out to about 3mm and cut out 12 rounds using a cutter a bit bigger than the hole in the tin (you might need a bit of trial and error here).

5. Put the pastry carefully into the holes - if you get any tears make sure you patch them with a bit of extra pastry.

6. To blind bake the pastry cases, tear off a small square of foil, fill with rice and place into the centre of each tart.

7. Bake for 8mins with the foil parcels, then remove from the oven.

8. Take out the foil carefully - if any of the pastry has managed to puff out too much, squish it with the end of a knife. It doesn't look that pretty but no one's going to see it and it'll taste just fine!

9. Return to the oven for 2-4mins until the pastry is light golden.

10. Take the tin out of the oven and allow to cool while you make the creme patisserie.

11. Whisk the egg yolk and sugar in a bowl until pale and creamy, then stir in the flour.

12. Put the milk in a saucepan. Slit down the length of the vanilla pod and scrape out the seeds with the point of the knife. Add the seeds and pod to the milk and bring slowly just to boiling point.

12. Take the vanilla pod out of the milk then pour it slowly on to the egg/sugar mixture, stiring constantly with a balloon whisk.

13. Once the two are combined, put the new mixture back into the saucepan and bring back to the boil stirring gently with the whisk to stop it going lumpy. Let it boil for a few minutes, stirring until it thickens.

14. Remove from the heat and pour into a bowl or jug to cool slightly. Make sure you cover the whole surface of the custard with cling film immediately so that a skin doesn't form while it cools.

15. Put a teaspoon of jam into the bottom of the cooled pastry cases and carefully spread it out. Put two raspberries onto the jam, pointy end up.

16. Spoon 3-4 tsps of the creme patisserie to fill the tart. You can get more in if you allow the first couple to set slightly before you go round again to add the rest.

17. Before the top sets too much, sprinkle liberally with the coconut.

18. Put in the fridge for at least 40mins to set. They'll last 2-3 days if they're kept in the fridge, before the pastry starts to lose its crispness.

Cardamom (Elaichi in Hindi) is the third most expensive spice by weight [after saffron and vanilla], but luckily a little goes a long way and gives a beautiful perfume to chilli, curries, biscuits and all manner of good things.

It can be quite a tricky balance to get the cardamom levels right in this recipe - too little and you might as well not bother, too much and it’s like eating a bar of soap [as I found out when the first batch ended up in the bin and husband described the second as ‘strange’]. The strength can be affected by how old your pods are – if they’ve started to lose their bright green colour, it’s definitely time to bin them and get a new batch.

If you’re not sure how strong you want it, I’d add half the ground cardamom to the chocolate mixture, taste, then decide if you want to add the rest; you don’t want it to overpower the other flavours. And don’t be tempted to substitute black cardamom, as the more woody flavour wouldn’t be right here.

I’ve listed the recipe with raspberries, but I’ve also made it with blackberries. I prefer the raspberries, as the flavour stands out more against the chocolate and cardamom but they do tend to be juicer, which makes the texture wetter. The blackberries give a more cake like texture but are a softer fruity note. You could of course leave the fruit out completely - substitute the cardamom for some ground ginger or just go for a pure chocolate hit.

Ingredients:

150g 70% dark chocolate
150g salted butter
6 medium eggs
250g golden caster sugar
100g ground almond
4 tsp cocoa powder
½ tsp vanilla extract
2-3 green cardamom
300g raspberries

How to make it:

1. Pre-heat the oven to 180°C/Gas 4, and line a traybake tin with grease proof paper.

2. Remove the cardamom seeds from their pods and grind to a fine powder. I've got a Jamie Oliver Flavour Shaker which I find invaluable for small amounts of spice but you could use a pestle and mortar.

3. Melt the chocolate and butter together in the microwave for about 1min 40secs, stopping every 30secs to stir. Eventually the remaining chocolate will melt in the residual heat of the liquid.

4. Add the ground cardamom and vanilla extract to the chocolate mix, then set aside to cool.

5. Beat the eggs and sugar together with a hand whisk or mixer until very fluffy and pale.

6. Mix the ground almonds with the cocoa powder and beat into the egg and sugar mixture.

7. Briefly beat the chocolate mixture into the mix.

8. Carefully fold in the raspberries with a spatula or big metal spoon.

9. Pour the batter into the tin and bake for 35-40 minutes. The cake will be set on the top and have a bit of jiggle below. It does have a tendency to catch, so if that starts to happen, cover it lightly with some scrunched up greaseproof paper.

10. Remove from the oven and leave in the tin on a wire rack to cool.

11. Make sure it's completely cool before you try to slice it - the top will still crack a bit anyway but you should stop the underneath from crumbling.

Quite often my hair smells of spice, particularly if it gets wet in the rain. There are very few days when spices aren't used in our house. We've filled two double spice racks and are now balancing extra jars on top.

As I've been cooking a lot of Indian and Middle Eastern dishes lately, I've really enjoyed using some of the sweeter spices in savoury dishes - especially cinnamon, as it adds such a lovely softness against other spices.

When I saw this recipe by Shelina Permalloo in the Sainsbury's magazine I knew it would go down a storm in our house. Muscavado sugar is one of my most favourite things (and also makes it into a lot of my savoury dishes). The full-on spice balances it out and stops the cake feeling too sweet.

The original recipe uses the topping as a buttercream once the cake is cool but I prefer the method here which gives it a coating a bit like McVitie's Jamaican Ginger cake (yum).

Oh and I added the rum, though you can leave that out if you prefer. My husband said it needed more rum but he'd always say that!

Ingredients:

175ml whole milk
2 tbsp ground ginger
1 tbsp ground nutmeg
1 tsp ground cinnamon
75g dark muscavado sugar
75g softened unsalted butter
75g black treacle
100g golden syrup
200g self-raising flour
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 medium egg lightly beaten

For the topping:
35g very soft unsalted butter
55g dark muscavado sugar
25g icing sugar
½ tsp vanilla extract
2 tsp dark rum

How to make it:

1. Pre-heat the oven to 180C/Gas 4.

2. Grease and line a 20cmx9cm loaf tin with baking paper.

3. Put the milk, butter, spices, sugar, treacle and syrup in a saucepan and slowly bring to a simmer, until all the sugar is dissolved.

4. Sift the flour and bicarbonate of soda into a large mixing bowl.

5. Pour the wet mixture onto the dry ingredients and stir well.

6. Add the beaten egg and mix thoroughly.

7. Pour the mixture into the prepared loaf tin and bake for 30mins, or until a skewer comes out clean.

8. Put all the topping ingredients into a bowl and mix.

9. Once the cake is cooked, remove from the tin carefully and place on a cooling rack with some newspaper underneath (this can get messy!)

10. Use a cocktail stick to pierce 10-12 holes in the cake without going through the bottom.

11. Take spoonfuls of the topping and spread onto the cake while it's still hot. It will sink into the holes and form a thin crust on the cake. Use the spoon to make sure it covers the sides as well as the top.

12. Leave the cake to cool and the topping to set - if you can wait that long!

Recipe adapted from Shelina Permalloo for Sainsbury's Magazine.