Barnstorming Bell: Healthy snacks from Buttermilk Barn (From Surrey Comet)

Entrepeneur Angela Bell launches new range of healthy childrens' snacks

1:43pm Friday 16th November 2012 in Leisure By Suzanne Wilkinson

Angela Bell is going from strength to strength having been nominated for two nationwide awards – as People’s Choice for Britain’s Favourite Cookery School in The British Cookery Awards and for Business Mum of the Year by MumsClub.

She takes multi-tasking to new levels, owning and running the Buttermilk Barn Cookery School in Petts Wood, and Lujon restaurant in Keston. Her latest venture is to launch a catering company supplying farm shops and delis with home-made sauces, cakes, biscuits and frozen meals.

The irony is that it wasn’t Angela’s background in fashion and advertising which honed her skills, but a simple love of food inspired by her mother’s home cooking. With a young family to look after, she cooked for dinner parties from home, but when her Make and Bake club, masterminded from the school playground took off, it sowed the seeds of a children’s cookery school.

The rest, as they say, is history. Buttermilk Barn opened in 2008, but she admits “it was a headache with numerous obstacles to get it off the ground, I can understand why people give up”.

The children’s courses and parties, suitable for two to 18-year-olds are always a sell out, and adults travel from as far as Hove for cake-making courses and themed short courses, such as family suppers and express dinner parties, which run weekly for three weeks. The two-day Christmas workshops will be an interesting venture. They’re intensive, but by the end of the course, everything is frozen, ready for a relaxing Christmas Day.

At its fundamental level, a cookery school has the potential to be a mini factory, hence Angela’s plans to supply ready-made frozen meals and other products. “It makes sense,” she says, “the premises are established and the school is a great place to perfect recipes and find universal favourites.” All Buttermilk Barn products will be additive-free, and all ingredients will be free-range and locally sourced. The line will also include gluten-free cakes and brownies.

If the sauces like Moroccan meatball and Madeira truffle oil and mushroom sound adventurous, then the family meals ooze appeal with offerings like a hearty lamb cobbler, chicken cacciatore and a sea trout lasagne with a basil pesto to serve at your dinner table.

“The Holwood Farm Shop, where I have launched a selection of Buttermilk Barn branded products, is just beautiful,” says Angela. “There are gorgeous foods to buy, and they have a lovely coffee shop too.”

Angela is also launching a children’s range of additive-free snacks called Hungry Herbert’s (Herbert is her maiden name) and because the range will be pitched at kids she wants them to be an integral part of the branding. She’s offering cookery classes and cookbooks as prizes for the winning logo, which should be a clear and simple design.

Entries should be sent to Buttermilk Barn Cookery school. The selected logo will be used as the face of all the children’s products. The Buttermilk Barn Cookery School Ltd, Suite C, Victory House, 131 Queensway, Petts Wood, Kent, BR5 1DG. 01689 820061. Email info@thebuttermilkbarncookeryschool.co.uk