My name is Bronagh Duffin and I founded my small Bakehouse cookery school in the countryside near the village of Bellaghy in 2017. As a registered theatre nurse it was a big step to follow my dreams, turning my baking and cooking hobby into a career by opening my own small “at home” cookery school to share my passion with others and help them learn new skills. My desire is to cook delicious, simple, nourishing, locally sourced, seasonal, home-made food and make this available for everyone to learn.  We offer classes in baking, cooking and foraging or a combination of all three, depending on your interests. Some of my oldest memories are around food and baking. Whether it was helping my mummy or Granny bake as a child, or eating my Grannies freshly baked soda bread, dripping in butter and feeling happy and content. As a child I loved to read cookery books dreaming of how I would love to cook these amazing dishes. I believe such strong memories are associated with food, making it so important and a mere taste or delicious smell can take us home. It has the power to nourish the body and mind and transport

In these last days of colourful Autumn, I’m feeling Winter’s chill advancing, with the frost bringing brilliance to early mornings as sunshine dances off frozen landscape when I’m baking in the early morning. I wrap up warm against that cold, biting North wind on my afternoon walks, seeing my breath rise in a misty haze in the brilliant rays of cold sunshine, as darkness wins the battle of light. But in the midst of this chill, I feel warm in my heart and under my woolly bobble hat as thoughts turn to warm crackling Christmas fires and cosy nips of sloe gin. Sloe gin is the perfect glass of Christmas, having been gathering its thoughts in a large Kilner jar, since it was made this time last year, ready for decanting into pretty bottles to give out as Christmas gifts to my favourite people. Sloe gin, often known as a poor man’s port is a warming liqueur made using the berries from the thorny blackthorn bush, which are macerated in a mixture of gin and sugar over a year. Of recent years I have developed an appreciation for this delicious drink using the foraged ripe, dark blue sloe berries known

Ludwig Van Beethoven once said “Only the pure in heart can make a good soup” and with January being National Soup Month, it’s a great time to create a delicious, comforting and nutritional hug in a bowl. With Christmas just over and the summer a little further away than we would like, a bowl of warming soup by the fire puts our hearts at ease, lessens our hunger and delights the senses. Soup is a tasty, quick, nutritious meal anyone can prepare with very basic ingredients brought together in a delicious stock. I’m typing this out as my favourite orange pot (the one with the little chip out strategically placed to the back!) sits on my stove holding a delicious bubbling concoction of tomatoes, a few handfuls of split red lentils, spiked with dried chilli flakes and the earthy, warmth of cumin seeds brought together with a simple vegetable stock. This will be my lunch, my Monday promise to eat well for the week ahead and hopefully to satisfy the frequent hunger pangs of my hungry teenagers when I can convince them to eat something healthy. My own memories came from my Granny’s soup which was the best I have