A weekly demonstration and hands-on cooking class!
Let’s Bake is a social baking session where cooks of any level come together to bake, share knowledge, trial new recipes and enjoy time in the kitchen. A different menu of sweet and savoury items will be baked each week and, at the end of class, we’ll sit around the table, accompanied by a fresh brewed pot of tea, and tuck in.
Recipes are a mix of new takes on old favourites, all taken from Barbara’s favourite cookbooks. They have been selected because they are simple enough to cook easily inside class time. The rather ambitious menu differs from week to week – and can be adapted to accommodate student requests. The focus is on learning how to make different pastries, scones and biscuits.
The course is designed for both novice and experienced cooks and will draw on the accumulated cooking skills of everyone. The class will start with a demonstration of one of the recipes before we break into pairs with each pair cooking a different menu item. Barbara believes there is no such thing as a bad cook, just cooks with varying degrees of experience. Come for the company, the food chat and the fun.
Examples of the dishes we will bake:
Alison Roman’s Tarte tartine
Margaret Fulton’s traditional scones
Claire Saffit’s All In Shortbread
Honey & Co’s eggplant bourekas
Nigella Lawson’s Coconut Macaroons
Frangipane fruit tartlet
Annie Smither’s cream scones
Traditional shortbread recipe
Mrs Maclurcan's Cheese Darlings
Elizabeth David’s tomato tart
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Hello, I’m Barbara. I'm a keen home cook as well as a food writer and bring the cooking experience and food knowledge I've gained by reading and writing about food, cookbooks and cooking for more than 20 years to this course. I’ve worked in and around food all my life, as a journalist and teacher and in food events. I created the writers’ festival Food & Words, sell vintage cookbooks online – and at December’s Northside Produce Market – and teach food writing. I spent almost 18 years writing about chefs and restaurants for guides such as Cheap Eats in Sydney and The Good Food Guide and travelled Australia in pursuit of food stories for Country Style. Not a week goes by where I don’t try out a new recipe or technique. I count myself as most fortunate to have worked with Yotam Ottolenghi before he became famous.
