Christmas Cookery

We had two great Christmas Cookery Classes on Friday, plenty of delicious and interesting recipes to make for friends and family over the festive period. 

The brie above was very popular!

This is the Jewelled Festive Salmon

As we go through the recipes, you are served tasting dishes of each recipe cooked, so you can taste the flavours, we talk about presentation skills and at what stage recipes can be prepared ahead of time or frozen.

We always make a seasonal cordial and then turn it into a fizzy cocktail, this is always popular!

This was our brie wrapped up in it's puff pastry star studded blanket, freshly out of the oven, oozy and glorious.

We slow cooked a Beef Carbonnade with dijon toasties on the top, we made this first, as this requires a long slow cook and is a perfect dish to make 48 hours ahead of time as the flavours keep on developing.

Thanks to Colline for being my morning class assistant and to Marianna who helped in the evening, I couldn't have done it without them.

We finished with a really lovely gingerbread pudding served with vanilla ice cream.

We made lots of other festive flavoured recipes from side vegetables to a snowy chocolate cake .....

Thank you everyone for coming, enjoy your festivities and cooking this year!

Summer Cookery Classes

 

We've had some smiley faces at Treetops during June for our Summer Cookery Classes, both day and evening classes, both 3 hours long, full of delicious, new and seasonal recipes.

We ended up with a bit of a pink theme which I fully embraced!

We made a delicious raspberry and thyme cordial which we mixed with sparkling water and a scented geranium.

The night before the classes I picked the rose petals from the garden and massaged a sugar solution in with them and left them in a cool place overnight.

During the class I turned them into a gorgeous rose petal jam, I'd eaten this each morning on holiday recently and it's so good (costs £11 a jar in Fortnums)!

After each recipe has been cooked, either Susan or Bianca, my two brilliant assistants, bring along tasting dishes, so you can eat and drink as we go along!

Our Summer Cookery Class cake was a gluten free lime and coconut cake.

Vegetarian wise we had a halloumi and orzo salad, minus the halloumi it is a delicious feta and orzo side salad, perfect to take along to parties or to accompany bbq's.

Talking of BBQ's, below are some chicken meatballs we enjoyed, which can be made bigger to enjoy as burgers.

We made a few other things too, all of which were lovely bright, colourful and tasty.

You always need a 'show-off' piece and for Summer Cookery this was our beetroot cured salmon, look at the vibrancy!  The process for this starts 48 hours before you serve it.  

I always include lots of recipes that can be prepared ahead of time, as they are always useful and always asked for.

Our Raspberry and Thyme Cordial then blended with other ingredients to become a Rose and Raspberry Gin Cocktail which really was 'summer in a glass'.

Cheers!

We will be running this class once more this Summer with these recipes, Thursday 10 August, so if they take your fancy, please get booked in and come along to join us.  It costs £50 for the class and you get to enjoy a tasting menu of everything cooked, along with a cocktail and a recipe booklet to take home with you.

Book Here

Easter Weekend News

Wishing you all a Happy Easter, it's so lovely to have the sun out and enjoy being outside and in the garden.

Next week we have a Watercolour Class with Claire

"Boats in the Mediterranean"

It's going to be full of sunshine, blues and beautiful boats.

Come and learn some new skills and techniques enjoy a delicious lunch and relax with a lovely small group of people.  It's always a great day.

Tuesday 11 April

9:30am - 3pm

All of your materials, a 2 course lunch and a glass of wine are included.

£85

Just 3 places left.

Our next Watercolour Class isn't until June, when we will be "Watching the Storm" on Wednesday 28 June; learn how to add action, speed and atmosphere to your watercolours with softness of foam and fluidity of waves, it's a fun one!

Book Watercolour Classes

Towards the end of April we have our Spring Cookery Class.

This is on Thursday 27 April and you can choose from either a morning or evening class, it's demo style with tasting of all the food cooked and a recipe booklet to take home.

10am - 1pm

or

7pm - 10pm

£50

We will be covering seasonal easy dishes to recreate at home, both for family and larger groups of friends and family, we have mains, salads and vegetarian recipes, a delicious cake, a quick pudding and a fresh spring cocktail.

There will be plenty of tips shared, we really hope you can join us.

In our Online Shop we have a Spring Sketch Offer, for just £49.99 you can receive Claire's Watercolour Pad, made from high quality Saunders Waterford paper, the thickest sketch pad on the market, this ring bound pad is ideal for painting outside or on your holidays as it folds flat, and because the paper is so thick it can hold watercolour on both sides.

You also get 3 of Claire's Watercolour paints and a set of 5 Watercolour brushes.

You can buy it here

Whilst you are on the website, have a look at our Online Workshops, we have a great variety of Yoga and Art Workshops for you, perfect for this time of year is our Spring Yoga with Rachel and our Spring Blossom Watercolour with Claire.

Click for Online Workshops

Enjoy the rest of your weekend

Emily

Hello 2023

 Hello Everyone

Our current frosty spell is beautiful but oh so frosty.

It's a while since I updated you all with what's going on at Treetops this term, plenty behind the scenes and we look forward to welcoming Claire and our painters back from March.

We have 1 space left on our Spring Flowers Watercolour class on Thursday 2 March, suitable for all levels of artists.  The class runs from 9:30am until approximately 3pm.  All of your materials are included so you just need to bring yourself.  Also included is a delicious lunch with a glass of wine.

Other classes coming up with Claire include:

Beginners & Refreshers class on Tuesday 4 April

In the Med on Tuesday 11 May

All our classes with Claire cost £85

To see what else we have please visit the website

Watercolour Classes

Proving very popular at the moment is our Online Snowdrop Watercolour Workshop, we put this together in aid of Hospice UK and to support the National Garden Scheme's Snowdrop Festival 2023.

It is suitable for everyone, and is shorter than our other online workshops at just under an hour, and it only uses 4 watercolour paints.

Claire shows you how to sketch and paint these beautiful little flowers.  Covering how to apply masking fluid, mix paints, apply washes, think about your back ground, mid ground and foreground, and the finishing touches such as shadows.

The Online Workshop costs £15 with £10 going directly to Hospice UK.

Buy Snowdrops Workshop HERE

We also put together a Snowdrop Materials Box with everything in that you need for the Workshop, you can buy this separately in our Shop

Don't forget we have a great choice of Online Workshops to download and do in your own time at home, some wintery to suit now and a lovely blossom one to look forward to Spring with!

See other Online Workshops

*****

Rachel was at Treetops this week filming some new Online Yoga Workshops, one was a lovely relaxing Yin Winter Workshop, so we now have the full 4 season collection for you!  This is currently being edited and sound engineered so should be with us soon in all it's lovely HD and professional quality.

We also filmed a short Morning Wake Up flow (10 minutes) and a Bedtime Settle Down flow (17 minutes).  These will be available to buy as one, and are perfect for when you don't have lots of time available but can still stretch, focus, practice your breath and relax.

To see our other Yoga Online Workshops see here  

They vary in length, some are in sections, once downloaded you can practice your yoga again and again.

Rachel was relieved that for Winter I let her inside to film, the other 3 are in the woodland our gardens at Treetops and look wonderful, and you can hear the birds, and even the cows in the bottom field sometimes!

Our popular evening Aroma Yoga classes will be back soon, make sure you are on the mailing list as these dates sell out quickly.

*****

Our beautiful Wellbeing Candle is selling really well, a gorgeous scent of geranium and warm woods, made locally with locally sourced beeswax it makes a lovely gift or treat for yourself.

If you buy a Wellbeing Candle in February, you will also receive some Geranium, Rose & Lavender bath salts in an epsom and pink himalayan salts mix, these are soooo relaxing at bathtime.

Our Wellbeing Gift Boxes were not just for Christmas, they will be available all year for gifting, they include the Wellbeing Candle, a rollerball blend from yoga Rachel, a lavender, rose and geranium eye pillow, the above bath salts, loose leaf herbal tea, delicious vegan chocolate and a lavender bag.

£50 with free p&p

For those of you who enjoyed our Christmas Canapes Class and would like more Cookery at Treetops, I'm currently putting ideas together and will announce dates shortly.

Fresh, colourful, seasonal and easy ideas

Make ahead of time, help with cooking for family and friends large occasions.

Don't forget to follow us on facebook for up to date news and our dates page on the website.

Free From Cookery Class

We had a really interesting and delicious morning, for our Free From Cookery Class.

We covered most of the intolerant and allergy foods such as gluten, wheat, dairy, egg, soya and nut.

We looked at the variety of alternatives, spoke about the different places that are available to buy ingredients both instore and online.

We made some crunchy chickpea nibbles coated in spices with a starter of mackerel dip.

Our main course was a gorgeous fish pie, topped with both potato and sweet potato.

After the demonstration, there as a tasting lunch of all the food cooked.

These meringue kisses were a huge hit, especially when everyone discovered that they were #eggfree and were made from chickpea water aka Aquafaba!

We made perfect pastry and had some little jam and nut butter tarts.

The kitchen smelt delicious from the Carrot Cake, full of sweet smelling orange and cinnamon.

To finish with we had an apple and chocolate crumble, heavenly, served with dairy free ice cream or oatly dairy free cream.

Everyone went home with a copy of the recipes and full tummies!

I will be running this class again on Friday 23 November

6:30pm - 9:30pm

£50

*

Next week we have our Monday morning Yoga & Meditation classes and our new Introduction to Papercutting on Thursday (2 spaces left).