Summer Fete Fruit Kebab Stall

The summer fete was held on Friday 9th July and our Let's Get Cooking Club had their own stall there selling "make your own" fruit kebabs. For £1 per stick the customer could choose 8 things to thread onto their wooden kebab sticks. Eight members of the cooking club took turns to help to chop up the ingredients and to serve customers during the course of the afternoon.

We were fortunate to receive a donation of 2 crates of fruit from Riverford Organic Fruit & Veg, as well as a fresh pineapple from Simon, and with a few extra bits and pieces bought from the shops we had plenty to keep us going. People could choose from strawberries, bananas, apple, clementines, cherries, pineapple, grapes and kiwi as well as marshmallows and pieces of Mars bar.

It was a popular stall and definitely one that will we run again at the next summer fete, and the money taken contributed to the staggering £2500 that was raised on that day.

Now... what shall we do at the Christmas fair...?

Scone based pizza

For the final session of this block of cooking club the children invited along an adult so they could show off the skills they had been learning in the previous sessions. In session 3 we had made scones and that was going to come in handy for this session because the children were going to make a pizza with a scone base. In addition, they got a chance to show off their knife skills by cutting up some toppings and making carrot and cucumber sticks. And to finish, we retrieved the smoothie lollies from the freezer.

Our celebrity chef this week was Tiffany and here she shows us how to make an easy, inexpensive pizza from scratch.

Scone-based Pizza

(per person)

100g self-raising flour

25g butter

60ml milk

2 tablespoons passata

A pinch of mixed dried herbs

50g strong Cheddar cheese

A selection of topping ingredients such as ham, mushroom, pineapple, red pepper, sweetcorn.

1. Preheat oven to 200°C (gas mark 7) and grease a baking tray.

2. Sieve the flour into a bowl.

3. Weigh out the butter and add it to the flour.

4. Using clean fingertips, rub the butter into the flour until it resembles breadcrumbs.

5. Gradually add the milk to make a soft dough.

6. Sprinkle the rolling pin and a suitable board with a little flour then roll out the dough until it is less than 1 cm thick.

7. Spread the passata onto the base with a spoon.

8. Sprinkle on the herbs.

9. Grate the cheese and add this to the pizza.

10. Now add a selection of suitable toppings.

11. Carefully slide the pizza from the board onto the baking tray then bake for 20 minutes until the cheese is bubbling.

The children had fun deciding what toppings to put on their pizzas and a couple of the boys decided to continue with our football theme and decorated their pizzas to look like the England flag. Whilst the pizzas were in the oven the children chopped carrots and cucumber into sticks and helped tidy away.

And then it was time to eat. Everyone loved their pizzas and even had enough to let their adults have a taste and to take some home with them.

After that, there was just enough time to have a smoothie lolly each before home. These tasted just as nice frozen as they had tasted fresh as drinks last week.

So next time you fancy a pizza and don't have one in your freezer, give this recipe a go. It dead easy and tastes great!

Fruit Smoothies

This week's cooking club we had a go at making some delicious fruit smoothies. Although England are now out of the World Cup, the football theme continued as smoothies are a great way to boost your energy just before playing a match or for refreshment after a match.

Our celebrity chef this week was Alina and here she shows us how to make a Totally Tropical fruit smoothie.

Totally Tropical Fruit Smoothie

2 very ripe bananas
500 ml pineapple juice
400 ml tin coconut milk

1. Peel the bananas and break or cut them into pieces.
2. Measure out the pineapple juice.
3. Open the tin of coconut milk and pour it into a jug.
4. Put all the ingredients into a blender and blend until smooth
5. Pour into small tasting cups to serve.


In the meantime, Morgan and Tiffany were busy making Justy Peachy Fruit Smoothie.

Just Peachy Fruit Smoothie

1 small can of peaches
150g pot peach yoghurt
200 ml milk

1. Open the tin of peaches and drain away the syrup.

2. Measure out the yoghurt and milk.

3. Put all the ingredients into a blender and blend until smooth.

4. Pour into small tasting cups to serve.

At the same time Sam and Corey were making the smoothie that had been invented by the cooking club from last half term.

Strawberries and Cream Fruit Smoothie

1 very ripe banana
150g pot strawberry yoghurt
100ml milk
2 scoops vanilla ice-cream

1. Peel the banana and cut or break into pieces.

2. Measure out the yoghurt and milk.

3. Add the ice-cream.

4. Put all the ingredients into a blender and blend until smooth.

5. Pour into small tasting cups to serve.

Once all the smoothies had been made we swapped them around so that everyone had a chance to taste all three. The clear favourite was the strawberries and cream smoothie, followed by totally tropical but they were all very nice and a great way to get a serving of fruit into you.

Having tasted the smoothies, we then had a go at inventing our own smoothies with the ingredients that were left over and with what we had in the cupboard.

Our first smoothie had one banana, a strawberry yoghurt, 200ml milk, a teaspoon of vanilla extract and 3 teaspoons of strawberry jam and it tasted like strawberry milk shake!

The second one had 150ml mango yogurt, half a tin of peaches, 200ml milk and 3 teaspoons of honey and that was yummy too.

It just goes to show how easy it is to get creative in the kitchen and to make a tasty smoothie. And nothing went to waste as the left overs were poured into lolly moulds ready to have as dessert at our final session next week.