Great Grampian Bake Off

Our colleague, Liz Cameron was asked by the Scottish Prison Service to deliver baking and cake decorating classes for young offenders at Peterhead.

“I must admit that although I was excited there was also a wee bit of apprehension as I had never been in a prison before and had never worked with anyone who had been through the justice system. Everyone made me feel very welcome.”

“I was introduced to the youngsters and my goodness what a surprise for me. Each one greeted me with so much enthusiasm that I was taken aback. This was not what I expected.”

“It was straight down to work and the youngsters were a pleasure to teach, each one clearly wanted to be with me in the class. We started off with easy fairy cakes and simple cutting out of fondant flowers, working our way through the time allocated each week to our final day where the class made their show stopper cakes.”

“Imagination and visualisation play a big part in decorating cakes, you need this along with the knowledge and skills of how to create a master piece. I had the knowledge and taught the skills and the group had the imagination and visualisation and once the skills were taught there was no holding them back. They had so much talent which just need to be brought out. The highlight was to see the delight on the youngsters’ faces when they mastered something.”