Cardamom

White chocolate gives a rich, creamy finish to these deliciously spiced slice-and-bake cookies.

The warm, sweet spices of masala chai are magic in these homemade doughnuts.

Neither long simmering nor heat-canned, this vibrant, lightly spiced jam couldn't be simpler to prepare. Red-fleshed plums lend a gorgeous garnet color, but any variety works well.

Most people think of ambrosia salad as a cloud of chunky white fruit in a glass bowl with neatly arranged canned mandarins on top. But we've evolved from those dark ages, and it's high time this salad got a makeover. Ambrosia can be reeeaally delicious, if made with the best, freshest ingredients. If you are even thinking about using dried coconut flakes from a bag, don't bother with this. Sweet fresh coconut meat is what makes it a standout. I don't usually go for aperitifs, but a chilled glass of Lillet is perfect with this salad.

The warming spices of chai flavor this fruity smoothie.

This yogurt mousse is an exercise in nostalgia for me, evocative of two different memories. The first is recent: cold lassi spiked with cardamom, a favorite drink at Indian restaurants. The musky flavor of cardamom just plays well with the tangy, refreshing taste of yogurt. And so does honey, which brings me to my second memory. My mother often served me and my siblings big bowls of plain yogurt with honey swirled in—it was a favorite summer lunch. I remember how the honey laced the yogurt in thick ropes of sweetness. This is a plain yet comforting dish, the two flavors marrying perfectly. I bring these three tastes together here in this dish, and finish it all off with fresh summer apricots. Top the finished mousse with apricot slices, or get fancy and pipe the chilled, set mousse into apricot halves and garnish with mint.

This recipe is a peek inside the magic hat of cookbook author and New York City caterer Serena Bass. There’s nary a tea leaf in sight of this spicy and refreshing “tea”—rather, it’s made from a fragrant combination of apples and cardamom spice. Be sure to use high-quality juice, not from concentrate, such as Adam and Eve apple juice or cloudy, fresh-pressed apple juice.

These cream puffs are a completely French invention. They look so perfectly beautiful! My children love filling them with whipped cream—and eating them, of course. These are certainly hard to resist.

Pistachios contain potassium, a mineral which may help lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol. Bliss is a few bites away.

This is the South Indian equivalent of cake: essential at every wedding, birthday, and holiday. Indians like to serve it warm and soupy. This recipe is part of our menu for Sadhya, a South Indian feast.

You will need about 2 medium sweet potatoes to obtain 2 cups cooked flesh. We like the flavor of roasted potatoes best, but you could also use boiled or steamed potatoes. Before using, peel and discard the skins.

This dessert captures all the smells and tastes of fall. Similar to its cousin, pineapple upside-down cake, it is easily prepared in a cast-iron skillet, then turned out on a plate along with its syrup. Sweet potatoes serve as a binder and sweetener in this cake. Serve it with a dollop of tangy crème fraîche or a little warm caramel sauce.

These cookies get their flavor from freshly ground whole spices. Be sure to make the cookies at least a day before serving; they will soften a bit and the flavors of the cookie and the filling will have a chance to meld. You can also omit the filling and serve these cookies on their own.

This is a slight twist on applesauce cake, relying instead on a homemade pear sauce. The cake can be made a day ahead. Keep it at room temperature, then glaze it and garnish it with pear chips just before serving

These cupcakes get their flavor from a traditional Indian spiced tea, known as masala chai. The tea is often lightened (and sweetened) with condensed milk; here, condensed milk is used to make the glaze.

Their subtle sweetness and affinity for spices make carrots a natural choice for other baked goods besides the more familiar cakes and muffins. Here, they provide an unexpected flavor for individual tarts with another surprise: pastry crusts coated in crushed gingersnaps.

Apricot halves are poached with lemon peel, cracked cardamom pods, sliced fresh ginger, and vanilla-bean seeds to make a luscious filling for little crosshatched hand pies. Plums or peaches can be used in place of apricots; you may need to cut out larger pastry rounds depending on the size of the fruit. Be sure to keep the fruit submerged in poaching liquid or it will turn brown. This recipe is a specialty of Joey Gallagher, whose daughter, photographer Dana Gallagher, is a frequent contributor to Martha Stewart Living.

Buttery madeleine batter is sweetened with honey and spiced with ground cardamom. Once baked, the mini cakes are glazed with a simple citrus icing.

Cardamom-flavored cookies are a traditional specialty of the Scandinavian countries. This crisp cracker-like variety is made more crunchy with a topping of finely chopped pistachios and shredded coconut.

Our good friends Dyan Solomon and Éric Girard own Olive + Gourmando, a perfect luncheonette on Saint Paul West in Montreal’s Old Port. Their little shop is what we expect the coffee shop in the afterlife to be like: they’re detail fanatics and it’s no contest the best place for lunch in the city. When they first opened, they were bakers, and the place was a bakery with a few seats. They still make bread, but mostly to use in delicious sandwiches. The front counter is displayed with brioches, croissants, brownies, and fruit pastries, and they’re all killer. We thought they were insane when they decided to open in Old Port a decade ago. It was a barren ghost town of bombed-out buildings, seedy bars, and grow-ops. There were no people, much less hotels and tourist shops selling maple-sugar products and “raccoon” Daniel Boone hats actually made from Chinese skunks. Like us, Éric and Dyan don’t take anything too seriously (Dyan can tell you many stories of Fred’s practical jokes when they used to work together: her showing up at 6:00 A.M. to a fake “dead man” at the bottom of the stairs; Fred putting a scraped lamb shank in his shirt, saying he may have hurt his hand. . . .) They’re Montreal classics and were kind enough to hand over one of their most beloved recipes.

This fabulous pudding has all the flavors of kheer, the Indian rice dessert, but is richer and creamier thanks to the added egg yolks. Many rice pudding recipes are made entirely on the stove top, which requires lots of vigilant stirring (and watching). My version starts on the stove top but is finished in the oven, which leaves your hands free for other things. Chopped toasted pistachios make a nice garnish for this comforting dessert.