The cake was based on a madeira cake recipe. The coloured cake balls were made first, adding food colouring and baking them in a round mould designed for making 'cake pops'. The cake was assembled by pouring a layer of cake batter in the bottom of a cake tin, adding the cake balls then pouring the rest of the batter on top.

The 6 cheeses were:

• Cream cheese mixed with basil puree, spread on the base
• Grated mature cheddar
• Grated pecorino
• Grated applewood smoked cheese
• Sliced goats cheese
• Shredded mozzarella

I can't believe that I have been cooking as long as I have and can't remember ever making a Cottage Pie before. It is a fairly classic British recipe and was traditionally a way of using up leftover meat from a roast dinner. These days it is commonly made using mince, and that's what we did.

The filling contained turkey mince along with various vegetables including onions, leeks, garlic, red pepper, courgette, tomatoes and beans.

The topping was mashed sweet potato. When it was assembled, I baked it in the oven until the filling had started to bubble, which didn't take too long because everything was still quite hot when it went into the oven.

I bought a large bag of slightly bruised bananas from the supermarket on my way home, for only 25p. I had already decided that I wanted to try a banana bread and was just waiting until I got hold of some cheap bananas.

In the past we have cooked chicken in quite a lot of different ways and used yoghurt in recipes but I don't think I have actually cooked chicken in yoghurt. This recipe came about because I was trying to think of something to do this week and we had chicken breast and vegetables in the fridge so I looked up recipes. What I did was based on a number of different recipes, all of them had a similar mix of spices.

I didn't measure the quantities very accurately but I put about half a teaspoon of each of the following into a pyrex dish:

ginger, black pepper, cumin, cinnamon, salt, chilli flakes, paprika and turmeric.

I added a few tablespoons of yoghurt and mixed everything together then tossed in some sliced chicken breast. This was put in the oven (gas mark 5) for about half an hour.

The vegetables (a mixture of onion, pepper, leek, courgette, garlic) were diced and fried, along with half a teaspoon each of curry powder and garam masala. Half of the veg were blitzed in a food processor to make a sauce, similar to my usual curry sauce. I added a tin of chick peas.

The chicken was very tender and the spices were quite well balanced. Overall the meal was a success but the pyrex dish was a pain to wash afterwards.