Cookery School
Learning life skills and having fun
In 2022, Five Acres received a grant from The Great Aycliffe and Middridge Partnership for four mobile cooking stations. This led to the birth of Five Acres’s very own Cookery School.
Champions that take part in Cookery School learn a variety of skills. Our aim is to deliver sessions that enable our Champions to learn skills and gain independence in a fun and safe environment.
Our Cookery School operates five days a week with a mixture of baking and preparing meals for either lunchtime or events.
Learning to Cook
Our Cookery School provides Champions with basic cooking skills and knowledge to use in a kitchen environment.
Skills that are learned in Cookery School range from health and safety in a kitchen, maintaining hygiene standards, following recipes, use of kitchen equipment and healthy living.
As well as creating tasty and nutritious meals, Champions have the opportunity to gain valuable life skills when shopping for ingredients. This includes practicing social skills, handling money and exploring different options for products that they can use in their cooking.
Working towards developing life skills for independent living and employment
Enterprise Projects
Champions taking part in Cookery School will often be tasked with an enterprise project throughout the year.
Champions go through the process of working in a team in order to create a product that they can make and sell. This includes coming up with our own recipes, ingredient list, packaging ideas and marketing content for our social media platforms.
Our enterprise projects also give our young adults the chance to gain skills that are valued by employers in a fun and inventive way.
Event Planning
Five Acres often holds events on site. These events could range to small scale birthday parties to garden parties open to the public.
The Cookery School will be tasked with catering for some of these events. From cake stalls to full three-course meals. Champions will work together to plan a menu appropriate for the event and its attendees as well as prepare and serve food.
Part of our cooking school is to look at healthy eating, choosing healthier options and portion control as well as what we should eat as part of our five a day.
Future Plans
With the combination of skills our Champions learn, including communication skills as they work together on recipes and menus, form part of our future plans.
We would love to see our dream of a community café at our Braffeton site, in which our champions work to serve paying customers, a reality.
Employability is one of our key aims for our Champions.
Life Skills
At Five Acres, one of our main focuses is to nurture crucial life skills ranging from maintaining a clean environment, putting fuel in the car, handling finances and, most of all, gaining independence.
