During then-Kate Middleton’s engagement to Prince William, the UK papers and the royal machine spun many stories about how homey and down-to-earth Kate was, and how William was drawn to her because she made a nice home and because she cooked for him. I have no doubt that Kate probably is good at crafts and shopping for housewares, but I did sort of wonder about the cooking thing. They always played a little fast and loose with the details about that, and I believe they probably had a part-time cook when they lived in Wales, and they probably have a full-time cook now (or they’re looking for one). I’m not saying Kate is hopeless in the kitchen or that she’s incapable of making some basic meals – I’m just saying, she’s probably not the homey little cook that the propagandists would have us believe.

So, is this surprising? Apparently, Kate took time out of her busy schedule (!!) to take a cooking class a while back (?) with Rachel Khoo.

The Duchess of Cambridge may have raised eyebrows when it emerged that she had wanted a second kitchen installed at her Kensington Palace apartment, at the same time as having the existing one refurbished. Still, she would appear to be in deadly earnest about making good use of them both and ensuring that her husband and Prince George are served only the finest cuisine.

Rachel Khoo, the television chef, has just let slip that she undertook a two-week basic course at Leiths cookery school with her, and, what’s more, helped her to get through it with flying colours.

“Kate was in my class,” says Khoo, who starred in the BBC Two cookery show The Little Paris Kitchen. “Kate was ill for a few days, so I took notes for her. She was a lovely person, but she kept herself to herself.”

Khoo was reluctant to be drawn on the comments she makes in Woman magazine, but courses at Leiths do not come cheap. A two- week course of the kind that Kate undertook at the school in west London normally costs around £1,600. Her sister, Pippa Middleton, chose by contrast to undertake a cookery course at the Grange in Frome, Somerset.

Kate had her existing 350 sq ft kitchen, originally designed by Princess Margaret’s husband, Lord Snowdon, refurbished at a reported cost to taxpayer of £170,000. Courtiers made the point, however, that the additional “private, family kitchen” that she wanted installed in her four-storey, 20-plus room home, was paid for out of the couple’s private funds.

The news is likely to be grist to the mill of critics of Kate who say that she is conforming to too old-fashioned a stereotype of a wife. Christopher Lee, the veteran BBC man who presented This Sceptred Isle, controversially went so far as to say that while she was not quite becoming “mumsy,” she was in danger of becoming “dull.”

[From The Telegraph]

A two-week cooking class that cost £1,600… and Kate couldn’t even be bothered to show up for every lesson. Hello Magazine said that this probably happened earlier this year, and that the two-week classes include lessons about deboning chickens, sauce-making and cooking souffles. All for a woman with a full-time chef at Kensington Palace? I mean, self-improvement is a great thing. If she had taken this cooking class when she was 25 years old, I would believe that she just wanted to become a better cook. But it feels like Kate thinks her life as a duchess is just shopping, decorating and taking the occasional class for fun? She’s living life as a bored, pampered trophy wife on the taxpayer’s dime.

Photos courtesy of Fame/Flynet and WENN.