Looking for a way to get the children busy over the summer holidays and want to get stuck in too?  South Devon's Manna from Devon Cooking School's family courses allow the whole family to get hands on with local, fresh food, transforming raw ingredients into a whole range of delicious dishes, in one of their five family cooking courses.

When grappling with bored children, there is no better way to occupy their minds (and hands) than getting them involved in a Family Pasta cooking class.  The whole family will learn to make pasta from scratch, getting messy in the process.  The children will be rolling, kneading, cutting and filling their own pasta dough to create ravioli, tagliatelle and lasagne.  They will learn to make staple sauces that will give them a skill for life, including pesto, butternut squash and ricotta filling, homemade tomato sauce and a classic beef ragu.

Manna from Devon Cooking School is best known for their wood-fired oven classes, and now children can get involved cooking some wonderful, healthy dishes too.  On their Family Wood-Fired Cooking you'll enjoy a fun filled, sociable day preparing, cooking and eating great summer dishes.  Based out on the deck overlooking the River Dart, your family will be collecting herbs, baking Pitta breads, making kebabs, stuffing peppers, roasting vegetables for lovely summery salads and lots more.   We'll even use the oven to bake a fruit pudding for lunch and pies to take home.  All of these recipes and skills can be easily translated to cooking in a conventional oven at home.

Become a baker for the day at Manna from Devon's Family Bread course, baking flat breads, poppy seed plaits, sticky iced lemon buns and honey seeded rolls. Although you will be munching on the amazing produce you make throughout the day, the children will take home both their breads and the confidence to try their hand at baking at home.

Introduce your family to cooking with Manna from Devon's Family Cakes and Cookies day class.  If you need that push to enjoy cooking as much as David and Holly Jones, owners of Manna from Devon do, baking gooey, rich brownies, light and fluffy cakes and crunchy biscuits is the best way to fuel your enthusiasm.  The simple, repeatable recipes learned on this class will become family favourites and lead on to exploring other cooking.

Making pastry is one of the kitchen's greatest pleasures but requires patience, skills and creativity, however, once mastered, it allows the baking of an infinite variety of great dishes.  In Manna from Devon's Family Pastry class, you will learn to make short pastry for savoury mini pasties, sweet pastry for a tartlet and the reputable choux pastry, to make the delicious choux buns.

The family cooking days are for parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles and god-parents to bring along one or more children. The kids get to do as much of the preparation and cooking as they like with parents and instructors helping where necessary.  No experience on the part of either adults or children is necessary. Suitable for children aged 8 – 15 (Note: Children aged 13+ are welcome to attend any of our classes).

Established in 2005, Manna from Devon Cooking School is run by Holly and David Jones who teach cooking skills to small groups in the relaxed environment of their Victorian home, positioned in an area of outstanding natural beauty in Kingswear, South Devon.  The stylishly decorated, homely kitchen and the outdoors' decking overlook simply stunning views across the Dart estuary to Dartmouth.  In addition to the main kitchen, there is a second kitchen that is in the style of a bakery.  As always, Manna from Devon only use locally sourced ingredients, cooking recipes and dishes the owners have discovered during travels around Europe and Asia.