THE first person from Scotland to compete in the television programme, the Great British Bake Off, will be in Kelso next month.
Lea Harris is one of the judges of the first Pharlanne Grand Gingerbread House competition to raise money for a children’s charity this month.
Principal food judge for the Scottish Hotel Awards, Ms Harris is heard regularly on BBC Radio Scotland’s Kitchen Café and she writes a monthly ‘What’s in Season’ column for Edinburgh-based Bite Magazine. She contributes occasionally to Berwick’s local radio station, Generate Radio, writes a blog OfftheEatenTrack.wordpress.com, and is a judge for several food award organisations.
Other judges in the competition, which got under way last week, are Earlston’s Cakes by Christine Baker, Christine Mitchell, whose creations are renowned among cake lovers, and Ednam House Hotel’s head chef and owner, Ralph Brooks, who is passionate about using fresh local ingredients, rearing free range pigs on his smallholding near Kelso, baking bread the old fashioned way each morning for the hotel and Pharlanne Delicatessen, and more recently, smoking locally caught fish in the company’s new Tweed Smokery.
He describes his style of cooking as ‘unfussy, but authentic and full of flavour’.
Sponsored by Ednam House Hotel and Pharlanne Delicatessen, the competition is to raise money for Children 1st Roxburghshire.
There are a number of categories:
z decorate your own gingerbread man for nursery school children
z gingerbread house kits for primary and secondary school children
z a ‘free style’ category open to adults to bake and build their own gingerbread house.
Participants register and collect their kits from Pharlanne Delicatessen, Bridge Street, Kelso, before November 15 and have to deliver completed houses and gingerbread men to Ednam House Hotel on Friday November 30 for judging the following day, when there will also be a public exhibition of the entries.