Lauren Cartridge will be touring London bakeries and patisseries to give us an insight into the best places to have your cake and eat it too!

Lauren is an English Literature graduate from Cardiff University with a passion for all things sweet.

Having spent the past two years working in publishing, but wanting to pursue a career in the food industry, she decided to take the plunge and embark on the Leiths Three Term Diploma in Food and Wine. Although she's obsessed with food in general, her main interest lies in baking and patisserie.   

She started a blog last year, Let's Have Dessert First, so she can share her baking experiences and be a part of the wider blogging community.

Since moving to London for the course, her eyes have been opened to all of the brilliant and innovating bakeries that the city has to offer. Inspiration can be found around every corner, and she's excited to try and taste everything whilst building upon these experiences to improve her own skill set. 

Kerri McGuinness will be sharing reviews of some of the best restaurants and eateries from her blog, Very Kerri.

Whilst Kerri has been working in the restaurant industry since 2010, hospitality has played a key role since day one.  

In 2013, she started her blog as a way to share her love for London’s tremendous food scene and streamline the endless lists on her phone of where to graze in the capital. Work and play really were sitting side by side.  

More recently, Kerri was happily in charge of dreaming up food-forward and fizz-focused projects for Searcys Restaurant Group, but increasingly had a hankering to do something more hands on in the industry.  

Since hearing about Leiths in 2014, Kerri had been toying with the mad idea of leaving her job to do the Leiths Diploma. The man-up-moment finally happened on a mountain in Megeve at the beginning of this year. She took off the skis, ordered an Aperol Spritz and wrote her resignation letter.  

Today, Kerri is grateful to be jumping out of bed every morning and getting on the bike to go to school. Surviving the food-porn-fuelled demonstrations as a gluten free student is a challenge but at least she appreciates all of the butter.

Kelly Stretton will be giving us the lowdown on all things Leiths in her student diary.

Kelly is an enthusiastic foodie who threw caution to the wind, quit her job and moved south for the winter.

After studying English at university, her passion for writing took an unintentional back seat; the all too common story of getting a job “in the short term” quickly became very comfortable.

However, she started to realise food was more of a passion than a hobby and wanted to be hands on in the foodie world.  All she knew was she’d turned twenty-nine (and thirty-six months) and the timing was never going to be better, so after much research she discovered Leiths. Here is where she knew her passions lie and where she could see herself creating an amazing career.  

So whether her weapon of choice is a knife, a camera or the mighty pen, Kelly signed herself up for the full schedule of courses that Leiths has to offer on top of the Three Term Diploma, as she wanted to know all the basics of cooking as well as the end results.

When September came, she packed a bag (three suitcases and two car loads) and moved to the big smoke.

Follow our students' journey from beginner to graduate right here on our blog throughout the year or, if you're feeling inspired, you can learn more about our professional courses and start your own journey here.