BBC Good Food Show Bloggers at the Brompton Cookery School

As one of the BBC Good Food Show Midland Bloggers, I was invited to join the rest of the team up at the Brompton Cookery School near Shrewsbury for a day of chatting, baking, tastings and inside information on the show.

Upon arrival at this beautiful cookery school in the middle of National Trust land in Shropshire, we were treated to rich coffees and wonderful muffins from resident chef and owner Marcus Bean.

After an introduction from Katy and Flo representing the BBC Good Food Show, we were introduced to Marcus and also to Robert Swift from Richard C Swift Ltd (a fifth generation bread baker with a passion for the dough that would be hard to top).

We were given an overview and lots of inside information on the show that I know you're going to love when you attend next month!

We were given a tour round Marcus' gorgeous and very well stocked cottage garden from where we foraged pine cones, herbs, wild garlic and flowers to include in the breads that Rob was going to get us to make when we returned indoors.

While Rob worked his magic with the dough that he'd been up from very early that morning preparing for the shop and the Ludlow Festival, Marcus set to work creating a wonderful wild garlic pastry to encase a fresh quiche using locally produced ingredients that we were later to enjoy for lunch as well as an amazing marmalade ham that he was making; the smells from the kitchen were amazing & made us all very hungry!

The history of Swift's bakery and Rob's amazing bread recipes were included in a copy of his book, Born & Bread, which we all received.  I'd thoroughly recommend Rob's book for anyone interested in making bread themselves at home.

Rob taught us to flavour and shape breads that we brought home with us to enjoy.   I filled mine with a delicious combination of locally produced cheese, red onion and sweet chilli sauce.

While our breads were cooling we were treated to a fabulous lunchtime spread of Marcus' quiche and ham, Rob's British tomatoes and a selection of some of the amazing food producers who will be exhibiting at the show from fruit teas, to chutneys, sauces, cheeses, pâté, chocolate and meringues.  For dessert Marcus created the most amazingly light and creamy chocolate mousse with a delicious honeycomb topping created by a new to the UK imported chocolate from Vietnam.

As it was Marcus' birthday on 9th May, we baked cakes to take with us which were judged by the birthday boy himself.  I'm very proud to say that the carrot and lime cake with a mascarpone & orange zest frosting won!!!! I'm now a very proud baker indeed.

We were given fantastic goodie bags to take home packed with some incredible ingredients, all of whom will be exhibiting at the show next month.

As part of the BBC Good Food Show blogging community, I'm offering my readers a discount of 15% on ticket prices. If you want to grab yourself the discount, then click on the image below to take you to the BBC Good Food Show website and enter the discount code of FYC20 at checkout.