Baking At Ballymaloe

Debbie Shaw teaching a baking course at Ballymaloe Cookery School, in Co. Cork, Ireland.

This picture was taken in September 2013 at a famous cooking school in the southern tip of Ireland. The school is called Ballymaloe, located in County Cork, and the woman teaching in the photo is named Debbie Shaw. All those goodies you see in the foreground of the picture were made by her during the course of the lesson: soda bread, scones, focaccia, lemon poppyseed cupcakes, and sponge cake with lemon curd and raspberry filling. This course was part of a women's tour I organized for my former tour company, Wayfaring Women Tours. This was actually the penultimate day of the tour, which lasted 9 days and took us from Galway City, around Connemara, to the Burren and the Aran Islands, down to Dingle and through County Kerry, across Cork to Ballymaloe and Blarney. Our time at Ballymaloe also included an overnight stay in the truly beautiful country home (called Ballymaloe House) and dinner at the house. Ballymaloe was one of the definite highlights of the entire tour.

I included a visit to Ballymaloe, both the cooking school and the country home, on the tour not only because I knew it would be a great time, but also because I wanted the guests on the tour to come away from their time in Ireland with a positive view of Irish food, cooking, baking, and eating. Ballymaloe is famous in Ireland (and throughout Europe) for changing the notion of Irish cooking as being bland, boring, uninspired, and unhealthy. What Myrtle Allen, who opened Ballymaloe House in 1963, did down in County Cork over 50 years ago was effectively start a revolution. At Ballymaloe, emphasis was placed on using local ingredients and "growing your own" vegetables and products as well as embracing traditional recipes and country skills (from cheese making to home brewing to baking your own bread). All the members of the tour got a chance after the lesson to make their own scones and cakes in the Ballymaloe kitchen and got recipes to take home with them. Needless to say, we had a great time. That's me showing up one of my magnificences below. ;-) You can read more about our time at Ballymaloe and about the school and house in general, and view more pics, at this old post of mine: The Ballymaloe Revolution. I absolutely recommend a visit to Ballymaloe--the school, the house, the restaurant, even just the gift shops--for anyone visiting Ireland or County Cork. 

Fringe.