How 20-year-old Anya Sturrock from Angus became one of the best piemakers in the UK

By Maria Gran

March 6 2023, 5:00pm

After being named best young piemaker in the UK two years ago, 20-year-old Anya Sturrock has kept learning and is now a patisserie student. Image: Kim Cessford / DC Thomson

Instead of sitting her sixth year exams, Anya Sturrock from Monifieth started an apprenticeship which led her to becoming the UK’s best young piemaker and a patisserie student.

Since Anya was young, she’s enjoyed baking and cooking. She got her first job at the WeeCOOK Kitchen in Barry as a kitchen porter when she was still in school.

Just two weeks before the first lockdown, she started her modern apprenticeship in professional cookery.

The 20-year-old – speaking to The Courier to mark British Pie Week – says she wasn’t very good at school and therefore decided to leave.

“I was never very good at concentrating in class,” Anya confesses.

The chef baker prefers cooking to classroom learning. Image: Kim Cessford/DC Thomson

“I prefer doing things, so I always felt the apprenticeship was the best option for me, because it’s easier to learn on the job than it is to sit in a classroom.”

She turned out to be a very fast learner in the kitchen. In September 2021, she was named Best Young Piemaker in the UK.

How Anya became the UK’s best young piemaker

Because of the pandemic, there was no slow start to her cooking career.

Anya made hundreds of pies for collection in the mornings before cooking takeaways in the evenings.

She says: “I started off learning everything all at once and it was like having like two jobs.

“We were working pies in the morning, then coming back and doing the tea time rush.

“We were so busy with the takeaways and then the delivering, it was mad.

A lovely serving of chicken and bacon pie. Image: Kim Cessford/DC Thomson

“It took me quite a long time to properly learn how to do the pies on my own, especially the crimping.

“All our pies have different markings on them to tell which one is which, so learning them all takes a while.”

The chef baker completed her apprenticeship last year and jumped straight on to a patisserie course at Dundee and Angus College in September.

Now she works three days a week at WeeCOOK and goes to college three days a week, too.

Most of Anya’s kitchen colleagues are also in their twenties. Image: Kim Cessford/DC Thomson

If it’s a busy day in the kitchen, she’ll even work after her classes to make sure there are enough pies to please the people.

“It’s a lot sometimes, but it’s good fun being busy,” Anya says.

Selling hundreds of pies every weekend

Her favourite pie to make is WeeCOOK’s Caponata Formaggio, filled with vegetables, tomato sauce and cheese. But her favourite to eat is one of their specials, the Bolognese pie.

Anya’s pies are available in the restaurant, for takeaway and through the post, though she prefers to take them to farmers’ markets. She’ll go out with 300 pies crammed into her wee Beetle and come back with none.

“I love doing markets, because it’s nice to speak to people,” she says.

“Sometimes I feel that you’re tucked away in the kitchen, so it’s nice to get out and meet people that enjoy our pies.”

WeeCOOK Kitchen owner Hayley Wilkes has mentored Anya through her apprenticeship and college course. Image: Kim Cessford/DC Thomson

As her patisserie course is coming to an end this term, the baker will be back at WeeCOOK full-time soon.

“I want to work now, because I learn more from working,” Anya says.

“I’ll definitely stay at the WeeCOOK for a bit longer, then I’ll see where it takes me. I’ve not got much of a plan.

“I love working there and it means a lot to me, everything Hayley’s [Wilkes, owner] done for me through supporting me leaving school and starting my apprenticeship.

“I’ve literally learned everything from WeeCOOK, all the basics and everything I know.”