A primary school girl, who discovered a passion for baking during the coronavirus lockdown, has made hundreds of scones to cheer up the elderly and vulnerable.
Riah Totten, eight, from Belfast, substituted her love of football with cooking after the Covid-19 restrictions meant she could no longer play sport.
With the help of her mother Amanda Dobbin, Riah has made more than 300 scones for pensioners living in the Ravenhill, Clonduff, Belvoir and Cregagh areas of Northern Ireland.
“She was struggling with the restrictions but she was happy being off because she doesn’t like school anyway,” Ms Dobbin said of her daughter, who has autism.
“But the cooking started when my mum dropped some baking stuff for the kids. Riah would sometimes get obsessed with things so when she started baking scones she got obsessed with it.
“We made 120 scones the first day and then yesterday we made 265.
“She has baked plain, cherry, fruit, coconut as well as chocolate chip scones."
Riah used four litres of milk, six bags of self-raising flour, a bag of sugar, 12 eggs, a bottle of cooking oil and salt to bake the huge batch of scones.
Ms Dobbin said they were awake from 6.30am and baked right through to midday.
She added: “It’s just taken off, she loves it. She says that Gordon Ramsay inspires her and now thinks she doesn’t need to go back to school because she wants to open a scone shop and work there all day.
“She has such a big heart, she always thinks of everyone else.”
