Category: blog

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 ever tasted. It wasn’t just the soup, it was the love and care the soup represented in the form of its soothing, flavoursome, aromatic heat as I cradled the bowl in my hands. It was the wonderful taste combination of the freshly grown vegetables and herbs tended lovingly by my Grandfather in his garden turned into a delicious meal by my Granny using her simple recipes.

Today my Granny might be celebrated as a culinary genious in her minimal approach to cooking, using wonderful, mostly organic ingredients with the pure heart, as Beethoven talks of, to just create something nutritious and delicious for her family. But back then it was normal life, before the dawn of convenience food. Thankfully I believe more and more of us are getting back into the kitchen, inspired by the influx of the celebrity chefs and cookery programmes who are making cooking sexy again! For myself I see cooking as giving and with my own cookery school I want to inspire people to create something delicious for themselves using my very simple recipes, so they too can give the simplest gift of food to their family, friends and loved ones… even if it’s just a bowl of soup.

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 as Prunus spinosa, which is delicious drank neat over ice or made into a Royale by adding a drizzle to champagne. I watch out for the pretty, blackthorn bush blossoms which are among the first to appear in the hedgerows, marking the retirement of winter and the spot of a future Autumn bounty with an abundance of gleaming sloe berries.
To make this recipe we pick the sloes after the first frost of winter which help soften the flesh and reduce the acidity of the berry. Ideally the berries should be ripe and easily squash between your fingers before picking but be careful of the thorns. When we take them home the sloes are washed and dried before being pricked using a darning needle to help release the juices. This darning needle, which is kept for such a task has never been lost yet and is as important a tool in the kitchen cupboard as the favourite rolling pin or wooden spoon. On less frosty late Autumns, we can mimic the frost by freezing the sloes before using them, causing them to become more mushy and removing the need for them to be pricked. The sloes are then added to a sterilised kilner jar, before adding sugar and gin. The turning of the jar is important in these first few weeks and I have a list of friends who are willing to do the daily turning of the jar if I’m away, with the promise of a wee bottle for their Christmas cheer.

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 us home to a place of contentment and happiness, no matter where we are.

At Bakehouse we are a small family business passionate about food, our local beautiful countryside and produce. We love to turn our fabulous local, seasonal ingredients into delicious dishes and to share these skills in a fun, learning experience. In particular, foraging for our delicious local food such as blackberries or sloes is an amazing opportunity to get outside and bring the tastes and scents into the kitchen table. We believe the process of cooking and eating is one of life’s pleasures, which nourishes the body, sooths the mind and creates a great experience of community and fun. Our workshops are relaxing, fun experiences in which you can take time out for yourself, maybe make a few new friends and surprise yourself with a new skill while producing something tasty, nutritious and simple that you can recreate at home in your own kitchen.

Some examples of our classes include making traditional Irish soda bread on a griddle, making your own afternoon tea  or foraging for seasonal ingredients to make wonderful drinks and desserts. We do get very excited about Autumn and winter which totally gives us an excuse to have cosy afternoon slice of cake, scone or bread baking classes with the fire cracking, baking the sort of cakes which give you a hug. A bit of Autumn blackberry foraging develops an appetite in the fresh air, before making jam and scones or foraging for sloes to make a delicious Christmas Sloe Gin. In springtime there is nothing more delicious than foraging for wild garlic to create a delicious wild garlic bread which you can even cook outdoors in this outdoor experience. When Summer finally arrives we love elderflower foraging to create delicious cordials to add to deserts or drinks.

Children’s classes run all year round, focusing on healthy eating, basic baking and cooking classes such as pizza, bread making, cake or cupcake decorating or cookie making. I have shared our afternoon tea making class. In this experience which is perfect for a group of up to 10, the group create their own afternoon tea from my recipes of scones and sweet treats. Following the baking and cooking the creations are served up in a sumptuous afternoon tea on a beautifully dressed table. Hopefully you find a class or experience you might be interested in doing at Bakehouse. We can’t wait to meet you and “Bake new memories”
Bronagh