Nankhatai, khari, cakes, samosas, dhokla, scones and other snacks to have with chai or tea. (104 recipes)
Crumpets are the spongy, holey griddle cakes that Londoners and the whole of England toast on winter afternoons, soaked in melting butter. A loose yeasted batter is lifted with a little bicarbonate, poured into rings on a griddle and cooked gently on one side only, so bubbles rise and set into the famous holes. Chef's tip: grease the rings generously and keep the heat low; the top must set before the bottom burns.
Shortbread is Scotland's most famous bake, handed round at Hogmanay with a dram and packed in tins as a gift all year. The classic recipe is one part sugar, two parts butter and three parts flour, with a little rice flour for the sandy snap; it is shaped into a round and cut into petticoat tails, a shape linked with Mary, Queen of Scots. Chef's tip: bake low and slow so it stays pale gold; brown shortbread tastes bitter rather than buttery.
Welsh cakes, picau ar y maen or 'cakes on the stone', are cooked on a cast-iron bakestone in kitchens across Wales and sold warm at markets and rugby matches, and they are a must on St David's Day, 1 March. The dough is like a rich scone with currants and mixed spice, and they are dusted with sugar while hot. Chef's tip: keep the heat medium-low; they need time for the middle to cook before the outside darkens.
Bara brith means 'speckled bread', and this is the fruit loaf of Welsh farmhouses and tea rooms from Snowdonia to the Gower. Dried fruit is soaked overnight in strong black tea, then mixed with sugar, egg, flour and spice, so it is moist, dark and keeps well without any butter in the mix. Slice it thickly and spread with salted Welsh butter. Chef's tip: wrap it and wait a day before cutting; it gets stickier and slices cleaner.
Irish scones are the centre of afternoon tea in hotels and country houses from Galway to Wicklow, and the bake that every Irish cook makes from memory. Buttermilk makes them light and tender with a faint tang, and an egg wash gives the glossy golden top. Serve warm, split, with butter, raspberry jam and whipped cream. Chef's tip: press the cutter straight down without twisting; twisting seals the edges and stops them rising tall.
In Vienna the Gugelhupf is the Sunday cake of home bakers, set out on the table for afternoon Jause with coffee, and every family has its own fluted copper or ceramic mould. Unlike the yeasted ring cakes of Alsace and southern Germany, the everyday Viennese one is a Rührgugelhupf, a buttery sponge lifted with whisked egg whites, scented with lemon and studded with plump raisins. It is tender, light and keeps moist for several days under a cake dome. A common mistake is a badly greased mould; every ridge needs butter and flour or the cake tears as it comes out. Chef's tip: soak the raisins in hot water for 15 minutes, dry them and toss them in a spoon of flour so they don't sink.
Marmorkuchen is the cake German children grow up with: a tall, buttery ring of vanilla sponge swirled with chocolate, baked for birthdays and kindergarten parties and kept under a glass dome for afternoon coffee all week. It needs nothing but a dusting of icing sugar, though many families pour over a thin chocolate glaze. A common mistake is over-stirring the two batters together, which turns the cake a muddy brown instead of showing clear marbling. Chef's tip: layer the batters in the tin, then pull a fork through just once in a spiral; less is more.
Before Eid and during Ramadan, Moroccan kitchens fill with the scent of fekkas: logs of a soft, eggy dough studded with almonds, raisins, aniseed and sesame are baked, cooled, sliced thin and baked again until dry, golden and very crunchy. They are offered to guests on trays with ghriba and other biscuits and dunked into mint tea or milky coffee, and they keep for weeks in a tin, so they are perfect to make ahead. The flavour is gently sweet, with liquorice notes from the anise and a little lemon. Avoid slicing the logs while they are still hot from the first bake; they crumble. Let them firm up first. Chef's tip: let the baked logs cool completely, ideally overnight, before slicing; warm logs crumble under the knife.
Every Moroccan home cook seems to have a meskouta recipe, the light, fluffy sponge that is baked in a ring tin and set out for afternoon tea, unexpected guests or a children's snack. This one is flavoured with fresh orange juice and zest; many families make a yogurt version instead, using the yogurt pot to measure everything, and that variation is in the steps. The crumb is airy and moist, not too sweet, and it pairs perfectly with mint tea or a glass of milk. No mixer is strictly needed, but it helps. Chef's tip: beat the eggs and sugar for a full 5 minutes until pale and tripled in volume; under-whipped eggs, the usual mistake, make a dense, flat meskouta.
Stroopwafels come from Gouda, the cheese town in South Holland, where bakers once made them from leftover crumbs and syrup. Today they are made fresh at Dutch markets, split while still hot and glued back together with warm caramel syrup. The Dutch way to eat one is to rest it on top of a cup of hot coffee or tea for a minute, so the steam softens the caramel. You need a thin waffle iron (a pizzelle or stroopwafel iron) to make them at home. Chef's tip: cut each waffle open the moment it comes off the iron; after 20 seconds it stiffens and shatters instead of splitting.
Butter tarts are fiercely loved in Ontario, where towns along the 'Butter Tart Trail' near Midland and Wellington County hold contests, and where Canadians argue about whether raisins belong in them. Small, flaky pastry cups hold a filling of brown sugar, butter, egg and syrup that bakes into a gooey, caramel-like centre with a crackled top. This version adds a little maple syrup and leaves raisins optional. Chef's tip: bake only until the filling bubbles and the edges are set but the centre still jiggles; runny is the goal, but overbaked tarts turn sugary and hard.
Named after the city of Nanaimo on Vancouver Island, these three-layer bars have been Canada's favourite tray bake since the 1950s, when the recipe appeared in local community cookbooks. A crumbly base of biscuit crumbs, cocoa, coconut and nuts is topped with a thick yellow custard-flavoured buttercream and a snap of dark chocolate. They're made for church sales, Christmas cookie tins and coffee breaks, and need no oven. Chef's tip: dip the knife in hot water and wipe it between cuts; it slices through the chocolate cleanly without cracking it.
Qalb el louz ('heart of almond') is the Ramadan sweet of Algiers: a dense, sandy semolina cake with a ribbon of almond filling, cut into diamonds with an almond on top and soaked in syrup while hot. Pastry shops in the Casbah sell it by the tray after iftar, to eat with mint tea or coffee late into the night. The semolina is soaked overnight in butter and water, which gives it its moist, grainy crumb. Chef's tip: pour cold syrup over the hot cake; hot syrup on a hot cake makes it soggy instead of moist.
Pazham pori is what the glass cases of Kerala's roadside tea shops are full of at four in the afternoon: long slices of ripe nendran banana dipped in a sweet batter and fried in coconut oil until puffed and golden. Bite through the crisp, slightly chewy coat and the banana inside is soft, hot and honeyed. People eat them standing at the counter with a glass of frothy, milky chaya, or carry a paper parcel home for the family. Chef's tip: wait until the nendran skins are mostly black; the banana must be fully ripe to turn creamy when fried.
Osmania biscuits are named after the last Nizam of Hyderabad, and they have been baked in the city's Irani bakeries for generations: round, crumbly, melt-in-the-mouth butter biscuits that are gently sweet with a distinct salty edge and a hint of cardamom. In old-city cafés, men linger over a plate of them and a cup of Irani chai in the early morning or after the evening prayers, dunking each one until it is just about to collapse. Chef's tip: chill the dough before cutting and baking; it keeps the biscuits round and thick instead of spreading thin.
Irani chai came to Hyderabad with Persian migrants who opened cafés across the old city, and it is now the city's signature drink, poured at all hours in places around the Charminar, often with Osmania biscuits or a bun maska. Unlike masala chai, it has no spices: strong tea is brewed slowly in a sealed pot (dum), while full-fat milk is simmered separately with a little khoa until thick and creamy. The two are mixed only in the cup, giving a rich, mellow, slightly sweet tea. Chef's tip: seal the tea pot lid with a little dough or foil, as the cafés do, so the brew steeps without losing steam or strength.
When the winter coriander in the Nashik markets comes in huge, fragrant bunches for a few rupees, Maharashtrian kitchens make kothimbir vadi. A batter that is mostly fresh coriander, held together with gram flour and sesame, is steamed into a cake, cut into squares, then shallow-fried until each piece has a crunchy shell and a soft, herby middle. It's a tea-time snack in Pune homes, a side on the festive thali and a favourite in tiffin boxes because it's good at room temperature. Serve with green chutney or tomato ketchup. Chef's tip: dry the coriander well after washing; wet leaves make the batter loose and the vadi soggy.
Feng li su are the gift-box sweet of Taiwan: little golden squares of crumbly, milky shortbread wrapped round a chewy pineapple jam. Bakeries in Taichung and Taipei pack them in tins for Lunar New Year, weddings and visiting relatives, and the name sounds like 'prosperity arriving' in Taiwanese Hokkien. Older bakeries bulk the filling with winter melon for a softer, sweeter jam; this home version uses fresh pineapple only, cooked down until thick and tangy. Chef's tip: chill the dough and the jam balls before wrapping; cold, firm pieces are far easier to seal without the jam breaking through.
Beskuit grew out of the Voortrekker need for bread that kept on long ox-wagon journeys; today a tin of rusks sits next to the kettle in homes from the Karoo to Pretoria, and they are dunked in early-morning coffee or rooibos. A soft buttermilk dough is baked as a loaf, cut into fingers and then dried in a low oven for hours until rock hard and crunchy. Chef's tip: dry the rusks slowly at a very low heat with the oven door slightly open; they should dry out completely, not brown further.
Neenish tarts have sat in the windows of Australian country bakeries for more than a century, and they're also found across the Tasman in New Zealand. Where the name comes from is still argued over, with one story placing it in the small town of Grong Grong in New South Wales. A crisp sweet pastry case holds a thin layer of raspberry jam and a fluffy mock cream, a beaten mixture of butter, sugar and milk, and the top is iced in two halves: one white, one chocolate. Many bakery mock creams use gelatine; this one doesn't. Chef's tip: beat the mock cream for a long time, a full 8–10 minutes, until the sugar has dissolved and it is white and fluffy, not gritty.
Afghans are a New Zealand classic, found in the old home baking books passed down in Kiwi kitchens and in the glass cabinets of cafés and bakeries from Christchurch to Whangārei. Nobody is quite sure where the name came from. The dough is rich with butter and cocoa, and lightly crushed cornflakes give each biscuit a crunchy, slightly rugged texture. A swirl of soft chocolate icing and a walnut half finish them off. They're not too sweet underneath, which is why the icing works so well. Chef's tip: crush the cornflakes only lightly with your hand; fine crumbs disappear, but big flakes give the crunch an afghan is known for.
Anzac biscuits are baked in kitchens all over Australia and New Zealand in the days before 25 April, Anzac Day, when both countries remember the soldiers of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps who landed at Gallipoli in 1915. Recipes appeared in fundraising cookbooks soon after the war, and they keep well because they contain no eggs: just oats, flour, coconut, sugar, butter and golden syrup, raised with bicarbonate of soda. Bake them short for chewy, longer for crunchy; every family has its side. Chef's tip: add the bicarbonate to the hot butter and syrup and wait for it to foam up before mixing; that froth is what makes them light and lacy.
Lamingtons are said to be named after Lord Lamington, Governor of Queensland at the turn of the twentieth century, and they're the cake of Australian school fundraisers, Country Women's Association stalls and morning tea at work; there's even a National Lamington Day on 21 July. Cubes of light butter sponge are dunked in a thin, glossy chocolate icing and rolled in desiccated coconut, so each one has a soft, chocolate-soaked outside and a fluffy middle. Some bakeries split them and fill them with jam and cream. Chef's tip: bake the sponge a day ahead, or freeze the cut squares for an hour; fresh sponge crumbles in the icing, firm sponge dips cleanly.
Sharlotka is the cake every Russian family bakes in September, when dachas around Moscow and Saint Petersburg drown in Antonovka apples. It is nothing like Polish szarlotka with its shortcrust: here the tin is packed with sliced tart apples and a feather-light batter of whisked eggs, sugar and flour is poured over, so it bakes into an airy, crackly-topped sponge holding a soft apple layer. Only four ingredients, and it is on the table in under an hour with tea from the samovar. Chef's tip: whisk the eggs and sugar for a full 8 minutes until pale and tripled; that air is the only raising agent and a short whisk gives a flat, rubbery cake.
Kashmiri chai, called pink tea or gulabi chai across Pakistan, came down from Kashmir to become the winter drink of Lahore, Karachi and Islamabad: it is ladled out at weddings, sold from steaming pots at tea stalls on cold nights and served with nankhatai biscuits at family gatherings. The colour is real chemistry, not food colouring: green tea leaves are boiled hard with a pinch of baking soda until the brew turns deep red, then whisked and splashed to get air into it, and finally cooked with milk until it blushes pink. It is lightly salted in the old Kashmiri way and sweetened in the city way; add as much sugar as you like. The mistake people make is using black tea; only green tea leaves turn pink. Chef's tip: pour in ice-cold water as soon as the brew is reduced, and beat it hard; the shock and the air are what lock in the bright colour.
Mamri, better known as mandazi, are lightly sweet East African fried breads made with coconut milk and cardamom. They puff up golden and hollow and are soft inside. Serve warm with pigeon peas in coconut milk (mbaazi) for a classic Zanzibar breakfast, or with tea.
Dutch appeltaart is a tall, generous pie baked in a springform tin, piled so high with apple chunks that a slice stands almost as tall as it is wide. A buttery, cake-like crust holds apples with cinnamon, lemon and raisins, and the top is woven into a lattice. It is what Dutch cafés serve with coffee, and what people bake for a birthday, always with a spoon of slagroom (lightly whipped cream). Amsterdam's Winkel 43 made it famous with tourists. Chef's tip: use firm, tart apples such as Goudreinet, Elstar or Bramley mixed with Jonagold; soft dessert apples collapse into purée and leave a gap under the lattice.
In the misty tea country around Nuwara Eliya, Hatton and Ella, and in every roadside tea kade across Sri Lanka, tea is made strong, sweetened generously and often whitened with milk, then poured from a height between two jugs so it cools a little and wears a frothy cap. Families drink it first thing, again at 'tea time' around four, and with every short eats snack in between. Unlike Indian masala chai there are no spices: the flavour comes from bright, brisk high-grown Ceylon black tea, often a BOP or BOPF grade. If you'd rather have it plain, kahata thé is the same tea with no milk and a bite of jaggery. The common mistake is stewing the leaves too long, which turns it bitter and tannic; three to four minutes is plenty. Chef's tip: pour from jug to jug four or five times; the 'pulled' tea is smoother and creamier.
Madeleines come from Commercy, a small town in Lorraine, where they've been sold in boxes to travellers since the 1700s, and Proust made them famous dipped in lime-blossom tea. These little scallop-shaped sponges are crisp and golden at the edges, soft and buttery inside, and should have a proud hump on the back. French children eat them for goûter, the after-school snack, and they are best within an hour of baking. You'll need a madeleine tin. Chef's tip: chill the batter and the buttered tin before baking; putting room-temperature batter in a warm tin is the common mistake and the madeleines come out flat with no hump.
Medovik, the honey cake, is the birthday and name-day cake of countless Ukrainian homes, from Dnipro to Zaporizhzhia, and is shared with kitchens across the former Soviet Union. Eight thin layers of honey-caramel dough are baked like biscuits, then stacked with a tangy sour-cream frosting and left overnight, when they soften into a tender, moist cake. The crumbs from trimming coat the outside. Because it is made with honey and eggs, it is vegetarian but not vegan. Chef's tip: cook the honey, sugar and butter until it turns a deep amber before the bicarbonate goes in; that caramel is the whole flavour of the cake. Common mistake: cutting it the same day, before the layers have soaked up the cream, when it is still dry and hard.
In Jodhpur, the day often begins at a roadside kadhai: huge, mild green chillies stuffed with spiced potato, coated in gram-flour batter and fried until golden and blistered, then eaten hot with sweet milky chai. Stalls near the Clock Tower and Sardar Market make them all day, and during the monsoon the queues grow longer. The chilli adds a fresh, green bite more than heat, and the filling is tangy with amchur and fennel. A common mistake is frying in oil that is not hot enough, which makes the batter heavy and oily. Chef's tip: fry each vada once until pale gold, rest it for a few minutes, then fry it again for 1 minute just before serving—this is the stall trick for a crust that stays crisp.
Darjeeling's first flush is picked in March and April on estates clinging to the hills above the town, and in Darjeeling's tea rooms it is served plain: pale gold, flowery and slightly astringent, with a 'muscatel' note in the later second flush. It is the opposite of a strong breakfast tea, so it is never boiled, stewed or given milk. Hill families drink it from morning till dusk, and it is a souvenir every visitor buys from Chowrasta. Chef's tip: use water just off the boil (about 90°C) and time the brew; overheated or overbrewed first flush turns bitter and loses its scent.
Maddur is a small town halfway between Bengaluru and Mysuru, and for nearly a century travellers on that road have stopped at its railway station and highway stalls for one snack: Maddur vada. Unlike soaked-lentil vadas, these are made from rice flour, semolina and plain flour rubbed with hot oil and loaded with sliced onion, curry leaves and green chilli, then patted flat and fried until crunchy and golden all the way through. They keep their crunch for hours, so they are packed for long journeys. Serve with coconut chutney and filter coffee. Chef's tip: add the onions first and let them sit with the salt for ten minutes; their juice moistens the flours, so you need very little water and the vada stays crisp.
Despite the name, there is no pineapple in a bolo bao; the crackled, golden sugar crust on top just looks like the fruit's skin. It is the best-selling bun in Hong Kong bakeries and cha chaan teng cafés, eaten warm at breakfast or tea time with milk tea, and many people order it as bo lo yau, split open with a thick, cold slice of butter melting into it. Chef's tip: roll the topping between two sheets of baking paper rather than on a floured board; the soft dough is fragile and paper lets you lift it on in one piece.
Hong Kong milk tea is the daily fuel of the city's cha chaan teng, poured hot in thick cups at breakfast and over ice in the humid afternoons. Tea masters brew a blend of strong black teas, strain it again and again through a long cotton bag (the stained 'silk stocking'), and mix it with evaporated milk for a smooth, almost velvety drink. Chef's tip: let the tea simmer for a few minutes rather than just steeping it; Hong Kong milk tea is meant to be strong and slightly astringent, or the milk drowns it.
Goli baje is the tea-time snack of coastal Karnataka: round, golden fritters that are crisp outside and soft and spongy inside, sold by the plateful in Udupi hotels and Mangaluru tea shops around four in the afternoon. The batter is made from plain flour and sour yogurt, with green chilli, ginger, curry leaves and coconut bits, and left to rest so it turns slightly tangy and airy. Serve them piping hot with coconut chutney and a strong cup of coffee. Chef's tip: beat the batter hard for a few minutes before resting it; a well-beaten batter is stretchy, traps air, and gives fritters with an open, bread-like crumb.
Castella arrived in Nagasaki with Portuguese traders in the 16th century, when the port was Japan's only window to Europe, and the name probably comes from 'pão de Castela', bread from Castile. Over 400 years Nagasaki's bakers turned it into something their own: a tall, fine-crumbed sponge made only of eggs, sugar, flour and honey, with a dark, sticky top and a layer of crunchy zarame sugar crystals at the bottom. It's still sold in long wooden boxes at old shops near the harbour and given as a formal gift. Cut it into neat slices and serve with green tea. Chef's tip: wrap the cake in cling film while still warm and rest it overnight. Its moist, springy texture develops as it rests.
Zanzibar is the spice island, and chai ya viungo is its everyday tea: black tea boiled with a home-roasted masala of cardamom, dry ginger, black pepper, cloves, cinnamon and nutmeg. The masala keeps for months in an airtight jar. Milk is optional; serve the tea hot.
Every neighbourhood in Doha, Dubai and Kuwait City has a cafeteria with a hatch on the street, where karak is handed through car windows in paper cups at all hours. Brought to the Gulf by South Asian workers and now firmly local, it is black tea boiled hard with sugar and cardamom, then simmered again with evaporated milk until it is strong, sweet and the colour of toffee; a few strands of saffron mark the Gulf version. Chef's tip: pour the tea from a height between two pans a few times; the froth and slight cooling give the silky karak texture.
Every Swedish café from Malmö to Kiruna keeps a tray of kanelbullar by the till, and on 4 October, Kanelbullens dag, bakeries can barely keep up. They belong to fika, the mid-morning or afternoon pause for coffee and something sweet. Unlike the big, iced American roll, a Swedish bun is modest and buttery: the dough is perfumed with freshly crushed cardamom, the filling is a thin smear of cinnamon butter, and the top gets a scatter of crunchy pearl sugar instead of frosting. This version shapes them into knots, the way Stockholm bakers do, though plain spirals baked in paper cases are just as traditional at home. Chef's tip: crush the cardamom seeds yourself just before mixing; ready-ground cardamom loses most of its scent within weeks and the buns will taste only of cinnamon.
Kladdkaka, literally 'sticky cake', is the chocolate cake Swedish teenagers learn to make first, because it needs one pan, no mixer and no raising agent. The outside bakes to a thin, crackly crust while the centre stays fudgy and almost molten, somewhere between a brownie and a chocolate pudding. In Sweden it turns up at birthday parties, after Friday tacos and at summer cottages, cut into wedges and served with lightly whipped cream and a few raspberries or lingonberries. Cocoa, not bar chocolate, gives it its classic flavour. Chef's tip: take it out when the middle still wobbles like set jelly; it firms up as it cools and a fully set kladdkaka is just a dry chocolate cake.
Crumbly, melt-in-the-mouth nankhatai made for fasting days with cassava flour and powdered cashews instead of wheat flour, rich with ghee and coconut and scented with cardamom. Each one is topped with half a cherry. They bake only until barely coloured. Makes 45 small biscuits (about 3 per serving).
Light savoury scones made from rice flour and gram flour, flavoured with dried basil, oregano, mustard and black pepper and topped with poppy seeds. Shaped as one round and marked into 8 wedges, they are good warm with soup or salad. The book's recipe uses one egg; to make them eggless, leave it out and add an extra 60 ml soya milk and 1 tsp baking powder.
Soft, white steamed squares of ground rice and urad dal, spiced with black pepper and green chilli and topped with a mustard and sesame tempering. They're a classic Gujarati farsan. Serve with green and red chutneys. For yellow dhokra, use bengal gram lentils (chana dal) instead of black gram lentils, and add a pinch of turmeric and some garlic paste to the batter.
Gujarati-style samosas: thin, crisp pastry pockets folded into triangles and filled with peas, potato and carrot, sweet, sour and spicy with lemon, sugar, chilli and cinnamon-clove powder. Make the samosa chapaties (pastry) from the recipe in the Basics section. Serve with lemon wedges and green, red and tamarind chutneys.
Classic crunchy ginger biscuits made with golden syrup and plenty of ground ginger. Good for dunking in tea, and they keep for weeks in an air-tight tin.
An eggless, dark and spicy fruit loaf flavoured with cocoa, cinnamon and black treacle, with mixed nuts and dried fruit. It is brushed with brandy while warm and dusted with icing sugar. Serve in slices with fresh cream. Leave out the sherry and brandy for an alcohol-free loaf.
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