Make a date with MasterChef’s Moonira

Blackburn’s MasterChef finalist Moonira Hinglotwala will be cooking up a storm at the National Festival of Making.

People can take part in cup cake decorating sessions with the pharmacist and amateur cook as part of the two-day festival.

Moonira is sure to prove a hit with visitors after she impressed judges Gregg Wallace and John Torode on the hit BBC One show with her Indian fusion cooking.

But the mother-of-two is also a keen baker and will be at Blackburn Market from 11am  to 1pm and 3pm to 5pm on May 12.

Her appearance is part of the festival’s Making of a South Asian Wedding project by award-winning theatre producer and artist Dawinder Bansal. The project will celebrate the traditional dressmaking, cookery and decorating skills used to create Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi weddings of the 1980s.

Tens of thousands of people are expected to flock to the free National Festival of Making which returns to the town centre on May 12 and 13.

The full programme of street theatre, art and craft, workshops, technology, music, markets, street food and more has now been unveiled.

It includes the BBC Introducing Stage – which visits the biggest music festivals across the country – which will host the best local up-and-coming music talent over two days in Cathedral Square.

Fashion designer Wayne Hemingway, who grew up in Blackburn and is co-founder of The National Festival of Making, said:

After such a successful first year for the festival the challenge was on for the next one to be even bigger and even better.

With close to 150 hands-on activities, improving on the 119 that we offered last year, the numbers speak for themselves but it’s also the quality of the experience that visitors won’t want to miss.

There isn’t another festival in the UK, perhaps the world, that brings together such opportunities, whether people arrive at the festival wanting to get busy with fashion techniques, ground breaking technology and cookery or simply to see great art and taste fantastic food. It’s all here waiting to be discovered.