There is a fabulous opportunity to learn to cook the slow way in Tavistock later this month – everything from gingerbread to tagines and chillis – with a free slow cooker being given to all participants to take home and put what your learn into practice.

The course is being run by adult education provider Learn Devon at the Alexander Centre in Plymouth Road with slow cookers provided with funding from Tavistock Health and Wellbeing Alliance.

Penny Westlake, West Devon coordinator for Learn Devon, will be running the next course on two successive Tuesdays, March 24 and 31.

You might not think that gingerbread could be made in a slow cooker, but in fact it comes out brilliantly, as Penny and fellow tutor Cindy Squire explain. This is one of the first recipes they tackle, then moving on to tasty winter warmers. ‘We normally do a cake for tasting on the first week and then they normally prepare something which they will cook at home and bring back for tasting the following wee,’ she explained.

She is currently working with women getting their confidence back with the Flourish project in Tavistock. ‘We are thinking of doing baked apples as a pudding, as well as a tagine and I did think of making a hot chocolate dish, making something and keeping it warm,’ she said. The course ties in with the cost-of-living crisis as cooking in a slow cooker is energy efficient and also a very straightforward way of food preparation, as everything is cooked in the same pan, saving on washing up.

It is also tasty, as Penny, Cindy and the other tutors show on their courses in Bere Alson and at Princetown as well as the Alexander Centre. They have discovered that as well as the practical skills which the course imparts, people find they bond over the cookery sessions, ending isolation, and want to go on cooking together after the course ends. ‘There is so much that you can do. At Christmas we did Christmas puddings to see if that would work. You make it more like a bain marie really, you put water in but it is a really good gentle heat and it was delicious,’ said Penny.‘At Princetown, the food hub gave us bags of ingredients for people to take home and that was brilliant because not only did we have ingredients but we were able to go through what to do with them. We had some people who hadn’t cut up a a pepper before or hadn’t cut up garlic before.’

She added that slow cooker courses, along with other fun sessions such as puppet making, offered a way into other adult education courses the centre runs. ‘We’ve had parents who have gone from family learning workshops right up to GCSEs and now they are training as a midwife,’ she said. ‘It is finding something that is engaging at the beginning, whether it is slow cooking, puppet making or anything.’

The course takes place at the Alexander Centre from 1.30pm to 3.30pn on March 24 and 31. Course free, booking essential, visit

learndevon.co.uk, call 01822 613701 or email

Another course will be put on if this one is over-subscribed.