CookIt! 2007 - A Licence To Bake!

Do you know anyone aged between 8 and 14? Do they love to bake? Then they can enter this year’s national cooking competition! To enter the Guild of Food Writers CookIt! competition, come up with a two course menu of main course and dessert.

This year’s competition aims to encourage children to bake and one of the dishes on the menu must be an oven-baked dish, either savoury or sweet, such as a pastry pie, flan or cake.

Send in your recipes by Thursday 12 April 2007 for your chance to win fabulous prizes.

Six talented finalists will be chosen from the entrants of this nationwide competition to come to London on Thursday 24 May to prepare their meals in front of the judges in the BBC Good Food Magazine test kitchen.

This year’s judges include celebrity chef Marcus Wareing (BBC Two’s Great British Menu), cookery writer Sophie Grigson, chef Mark Hix (Executive Chef, Caprice Holdings) and BBC Good Food Magazine’s Food Director Sara Buenfeld.

The competition is sponsored by the Flour and Grain Education Programme.

Prizes

First Prize
A two night stay in Paris travelling by Eurostar or flying for the winner and one adult. The perfect chance to enjoy the culinary delights of the city as well as seeing the sights. Courtesy of Airmiles.

Second Prize
An overnight stay at Claridge’s, one of London’s most famous hotels for the winner and one adult to include dinner, bed and breakfast and a trip around the kitchens.

Third prize
A one day cookery course for the winner at Raymond Blanc’s renowned Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons in Oxfordshire.

Each of the three runners up will receive a selection of bakeware from the Anolon range up to the value of £100.

Expenses are paid for the six finalists and an accompanying adult to attend the final judging in London.

The schools attended by each of the finalists this year will be invited to join the ‘Chefs Adopt a School’ scheme run by the Academy of Culinary Arts. Under the scheme, members of the Academy ‘adopt’ a school and teach primary and secondary school pupils at that school about food, where it comes from, how to taste and how to cook it.

The Guild of Food Writers’ children’s cookery competition is part of a national children’s food and cookery education campaign launched by the Guild of Food Writers in 2003.

For further information go to: GFW.co.uk/campaigns/cookit_main.html.