My first impression of the Saturday culinary class offered at the Ritz Carlton was not great. In the confirmation email I was told to meet at Dolce Vita but the member of staff who I spoke to in the lobby told me it had shut down so he sent me to concierge. Concierge then pointed me (literally) along a corridor in the direction of a room which was crammed full of gingerbread houses which I knew was also wrong so, after asking a third member of staff, I again was pointed towards Lagoona restaurant where indeed the kitchen area was all set up for the class.

We started just after 10am and Chef Yusuke Aoki spoke to us about his passion for pastry, his training, experience and background. It was clear he was very knowledgeable and his enthusiasm shone through. The class started with a demonstration of how to make a Yule Log and throughout we were encouraged to ask questions and sample the ingredients.

Chef then moved on to show us how to decorate a gingerbread house – he made it look so simple!  We were given biscuits and a gingerbread house to decorate and it soon became clear it was much trickier than we had been led to believe but it was really fun.

Soon the Yule Log ( which had been cooked the day before in true Blue Peter style) was brought out and we were shown how to fill it, roll it and decorate it in a variety of ways. I then went up and had a go at decorating one with ganache, chocolate shards, fresh berries,marshmallows and icing sugar.

Throughout the class the staff were fantastic, very encouraging and knowledgeable. There wasn’t as much ‘ hand on ‘ cooking as I experienced at Isaan at the Grand Hyatt but this wasn’t a problem as it was so good to see the professionals at work. I thoroughly enjoyed my couple of hours and even more so when we were told we could take home our gingerbread houses, biscuits and  and Yule Logs – I thought this was very generous.

 

The Ritz runs a culinary class every Saturday with a different theme each week at a cost of 200QR per class, I will definitely be booking onto future classes. They would also make a fantastic Christmas present for someone who likes cooking and baking. I do have 2 pieces of feedback though – firstly make it clear where the class is taking place and ensure that the recipes in the booklet are proof read as some of the ingredients and methods were not as clear as they could have been.