EXPLODING cakes are probably not the first things that cross your mind when you dream about hitting the slopes this winter.

But while scores of eager skiers and snowboarders pack their sallapettes and sun cream for a week on the piste, dozens of poor chalet hosts will be in a tizzy over toast, facing challenges about how to prepare chicken and feeling vexed about their Victoria sponge.

Unless they have experienced the culinary expertise of two sisters from near Evesham, that is.

Isabel and Lucy Bomford set up the Orchards School of Cookery at their family's Georgian farmhouse in Salford Priors in September 2003 to offer an all-you-need-to-know intensive one or two-week course in everything a chalet cook needs to do.

Both have studied cookery to a high standard - 27-year-old Lucy worked at Chez Georges and Caf de L'Esplanade, two of the most prestigious restaurants in Paris - and have each experienced the ups-and-downs of chalet hosting.

They are now passing on their expert tips to a constant stream of gap year students desperate to be groomed to perfection for their looming first season in the mountains.

"I know from experience that my first few weeks as a chalet cook were an absolute nightmare. The idea behind this course was to prevent anyone else feeling like that," 29-year-old Isabel said.

"There are things you don't think about having to deal with - like the first time you go shopping at a cash and carry and everything is in boxes with foreign labels, and not realising that the altitude in the mountains causes normal cakes to explode.

"This is why you have to make them with yoghurt."

It is these little gems of information - as well as learning how to plan and cook a menu of dishes to impress even the most finicky food critic - that students, who have travelled from as far as Australia, are willing to pay £895 to get their hands on.

Sarah Martin, an 18-year-old "gappie" from London at the end of her first week under the watchful eye of Isabel and Lucy, even went as far as saying that she would have paid more for the confidence and expertise she is expecting to take away from her two-week stay.

"I'm sure I'd be coming straight home if I turned up and my first week as a chalet host was anything like as bad as what Isabel and Lucy say it can be," she said.

Sarah, along with five fellow students, all started the course with little or no knowledge of cooking.

"The most extravagant thing I had ever cooked was cheese on toast," said 19-year-old Joe Buck from Norfolk.

But after just five days, they have learnt how to master mouth-watering delights such as duck with ruby sauce, avocado fouette with crab and tomato concasse, warm goats cheese salad with fig compote, and French apple pie with Grand Marnier cream.

By the end of two weeks the students are expected to have gained enough experience to create their own masterpieces in the kitchen.

Armed with a bulging Chalet Cook's file and goodie bag packed with time-saving pieces of equipment, the chalet hosts are then packed off ready to take tackle their first season with the perfect routine.

This ensures they have plenty of time to do what they went out there to do in the first place - ski.

As well as catering for chalet cooks, Isabel and Lucy also offer a designer dinners course to teach their students how to host the perfect dinner party, and even an off-to-university course for prospective students who need to know how to survive on a budget.

So what next for the two sisters, whose other passions include motorbikes and running four miles a day?

Jilly Cooper's publicist has approached them with a view to doing a Jamie Oliver- style book and their innovative business idea has deservedly caught the attentions of a savvy PR professional desperate to launch them on to our screens as the "Trinny and Susanah of cookery".

Are they happy with the comparison?

"Well it's better than being compared to the Two Fat Ladies," Isabel said.

n For further information call Isabel or Lucy on 01789 490259 or visit www.orchardscookery.co.uk