Pudding Extravangza and Spanish Trip

It has been a week of puddings and Spanish sunshine! The Great St Stephen’s Pudding Extravaganza was a superb evening, in which the families of St Stephen’s literally cooked up a storm of culinary delights, as the legendary Prue Leith visited St Stephen’s to sample the most stupendous array of scrumptious puddings. With 18 puddings on display, you couldn’t help but feel your mouth water! We had pirate ships, never-ending towers, a pleasure dome, Iles flottante, meringues, roulades, crumbles, mousses and enough ganache to have a bath in! The children, maybe with a little help from their parents, really pulled out all the stops and, at the end of the evening, Prue and Cookie hard the hardest of jobs to choose some winners – though they were all winners in our eyes. Silent cheer for our winners:

Rec Milne Garcia-Guilarte Julia Cañadio Cheese Cake
Rec Rossetti Jones Tabby Hooray for all the Pirates
Year 6 Stevenson Howard Vyse / Cookson Elsie and Wilf The Pleasure Dome
Year 6 Ayres Morgan Maggie May Maggie May’s Chocolate Roulade with Chocolate Ganache – and a splash of brandy!

A special mention to our fantastic House captains who interviewed Prue with a range of challenging questions – I particularly enjoyed Cos’s ‘Have you ever called out for a Deliveroo? And again a massive thank you to Prue for her third visit to St Stephen’s and making it such a memorable occasion and for Cookie for her judging and her canapés (what a combination!).

Is it too late to sponsor a pudding I hear you cry? Of course not – the pudding winners have been announced but it is the class with the most sponsorship that gets an afternoon of sports with Alastair and a delicious afternoon tea from Cookie. Sponsorship stands at £3,145 currently but can we nudge that up for an extra bush or tree? I think we can! We will close the sponsorship at 9am on Tuesday morning so hit that parentmail button and soon we will all be hugging our own tree!

Year 5 Silverstein have been enjoying the most glorious week in Spain with Spanish classes in the mornings and culture in the afternoon combined with that all important beach afternoon. It was rather an early start at 4.30 on Monday morning but we were soon at the airport and I was sipping a large coffee waiting for Mr Faith’s text that they were all safely on the plane, which duly came through. They arrived in Seville to a very nice 21 degrees. They were soon touring Seville and the magnificent Plaza de Espana. Then it was off to the language school to unpack and get even more excited. Tuesday was Spanish lessons, touring the local town and buying the ingredients for the paella they would be making and finally a stint of flamenco dancing. Wednesday was the ferry to Cadiz, masses of churros and chocolate, which went down a storm of course and the portions were enormous. The fifteen euros you gave them was then distributed to the children, who set about spending them in the souvenir shops nearby. They arrived at the Tavira Tower, on top of which is their amazing camera obscura. Conditions were perfect with clear blue skies and they were able to see a perfect, live panoramic image of Cádiz from the top of the tower. On Thursday, they set off after the daily Spanish lesson to the magnificent Castillo de San Marcos where they were told (in Spanish of course) all about the history of the castle and it’s amazing features. In the afternoon, they spread out on a sandy beach, which they pretty much got to themselves, and the children enjoyed a mixture of football, paddling and frisbee. Today they will say their goodbyes as they journey back to rather a colder climate. It’s not a bad life really!

Have a lovely weekend.