Cookery skills are top of the class at Lawn Manor Academy

The next generation of budding Masterchefs have received special tuition thanks to Lawn Manor Academy’s special Saturday cooking sessions.

Having now completed the fifth and final session for this academic year, pupils and their families have been invited in once a term over the academic year to receive a dedicated cookery masterclass from Head of Design Technology Sarah Smith and Technician Lynn Jones.

The sessions have covered a wide variety of foods and techniques, including making pasta and sauces, Easter treats, cheesecake, how to adapt recipes to make different meals, and this final session was themed around pastry and picnics, including making a quiche from scratch.

Sarah Smith explained: “The Saturday sessions have been really good, we’ve had about 10 families each time and it has become a regular date in the diary for everyone to get together and learn something new.

“We’ve covered such a wide range of recipes and word has even got around the school, with people coming to us to ask us for the recipes we’ve covered in the sessions!  Each time, we try and do a mix of foods and skills that might be familiar to families, but that perhaps they’ve never tried cooking for themselves.”

Initially, the sessions were introduced as a way to help combat the cost of living crisis and to help people develop the skills to make quick, easy and low cost nutritious meals.  However, it quickly turned into an opportunity to spend quality time as a family.

“It’s morphed into a great day out for families to spend cooking with their children, as well as learning new things,” added Sarah.  “Everyone really enjoys it, and everyone’s welcome too – we’ve even had great grandparents come along.  One of our Ukrainian families also used some of the time here to cook a Ukrainian pancake dish to share it with everyone, which was lovely. 

“Cooking as a family is such a fun and relaxing thing to do.  The added bonus is that we’re building everyone’s confidence in their cooking skills and at the end of the session they all get to take home a meal, plus additional ingredients to make it again.  We’ve even started taking requests for recipes to try, which is why this final session included quiche.

“With food being so expensive nowadays it is so much cheaper to make things from scratch, but you need to know how to do that and it’s a skill that needs to be learnt.  We hope we’re helping our families with these sessions, as well as continuing to build important relationships and links between home and school.”

Lawn Manor Academy is part of the Ascend Learning Trust.  For more information, visit www.lawnmanor.org.

For further information please contact Eleanor Butler 07775 943085 or email [email protected]