Easter Workshops

We have just finished running the Easter workshops, Tuesday was Easter Baking and the children aged from 4-13 made Hot Cross  Buns, Simnel Cakes which they decorated beautifully, Easter Biscuits and did some wonderful ‘marbelling’ with icing and for the finale they decorated their own chocolate Easter Eggs and made my favourite chocolates in the whole world, Jazzies, to go in the middle of their eggs.

We had Kate from the Chocolate Source along to run the chocolate part of the workshop.  Kate aka ‘Chocolate Kate’ is great fun to work with and she really knows her stuff so if you want a chocolate party then you can contact her on 07939 098 070.

The children went home with two big boxes full of Easter Baking and their Easter Eggs with lots of ‘wows’ from parents when they were collected after 3 hours of cooking.

Yesterday we did the healthy version and had 10-14 year olds over to make yummy dishes with Spring Vegetables.  There were a few turned up noses when they saw the cabbage, spring greens, leeks and kale (actually mainly from my husband who stuck his head in halfway through to see where the lovely smells were coming from).  We made a lovely fresh Spring Veg Soup which just ooozed healthiness, followed by roasting different veg in a lovely marinade, Spring Greens and Lemon Risotto (I thought this was just the best item they made, however, Ellie (10) decided that although it tasted fab she was never going to make it again as it involved standing still for 20 minutes and stirring constantly.  We decided that you needed lots of friends round so they could take it in turns and talk to you whilst you were cooking them the risotto. )  We finished off with two different types of foccacia.

Two of the boys on the workshop were off camping straight afterwards and Mum had announced that she wasn’t taking any food with her only what the boys cooked and brought back,  hope she enjoyed her supper, it smelt great.

One of the boys enjoyed making bread from scratch the best, just that feeling of kneading the dough and the fact that it’s so therapeutic and doesn’t take very long to make from scratch only using your hands.

The children also showed their skills at one of the most important aspects of cooking – washing up and drying up afterwards.  This is skill that’s in short supply currently due to the use of dishwashers so we try and build it into the workshops whenever we can!  It’s great to learn to cook food but children also need to realise that the clearing up needs to be done too – Mum isn’t there as the house slave.

I had a very pleasant afternoon yesterday, very relaxing and it beat being in the office.