Classes: Cooking class at Mr Collins

Mr Collins is an Italian place in Collins Square which is a stones throw away from Southern Cross station. Here they were blogged about by six people all of whom were invited or who liked the place.

We paid $10 to attend this one hour masterclass. It included a non alcoholic drink, the demo and the meal. It started at 2:15pm.

Preparing the ingredients

Here we came for the cooking and the eating. We met up with chef Francesco from Sicily. He made this lasagna with ragu which was cooked for about three hours.

The event was attended by foodies and office workers alike.

The lasagna was cold but flavoursome. It was also soggy. But the coffees and the tea that I had was really nice, so I might just come by for a coffee and to try the cannoli which looked so good. Someone else said that the pizza was great here, so I might have to try that.

The chef made the sauce first, putting in the 70g of butter for the bechamel (in a seperate pan) and the diced carrots and celery.  When the ragu was cooked he put the sauce in between the sheets as well as the bechamel. It took about 40 minutes to cook in the oven.

It was just fun watching the chef make the food.  He made one with the Barilla sheets and one without. The one without was much better.

Do sign up for the classes in time for Christmas and summer

Baking: how to make

As part of Bupa's best blog competition for 2015

Students baking is an essential skill if you don't want to waste a lot of money buying café laden snacks. We show you some videos on how to bake basic snacks.

Choux pastry.

It should be light and fluffy and with a little bit of cream on the inside. Saveur an online magazine shows you how to make them easily in their video below.

Red Velvet cupcakes

These are simple to make and you can make it from scratch. They are about 400 cal for a big one. But you can do baby ones or vegan ones as they have less calories.

Joyofbaking.com shows us to make it.

Chocolate tart

This is so rich and decadent and easy to make at home. The ones you get outside can be stodgy and calorie laden. And very expensive. The video below shows you how to make an easy chocolate tart.

Macarons

These are small cookie like snacks but the ones outside are sugar laden. Do it yourself with egg whites is even better. This is Martha Stewart's recipe below