A CHILDREN’S food festival is back by popular demand this summer – and expected to attract almost 20,000 hungry young cooks.

The first Children’s Food Festival held at Abingdon airfield in 2007 drew a crowd of more than 16,000 people.

Organisers are hoping that even more will attend this year.

The county’s second food festival is being held on Saturday and Sunday, June 27-28, at the Northmoor Trust Farm at Little Wittenham, near Didcot.

The festival is fronted by celebrity chefs Raymond Blanc and Sophie Grigson, who will be giving cooking demonstrations and inviting children to lend them a hand.

Festival director Eka Morgan said: “We want children to discover that cooking is fun and creative.

“The poor relationship I had with food as a child has dogged me all my adult life, as old habits are hard to break.

“I could have really done with an experience which showed me that food and cooking are something to celebrate.

“Parents say that one of the best ways to encourage children to eat good food is to get them to cook it themselves.

“I thought that a festival which conveyed positive messages about food, with plenty of colour, humour and hands-on cooking, could go some way to transforming young people’s approach to eating.”

Other chefs taking part include Annabel Karmel, Jane Fearnley Whittingstall (author of The Good Granny Cookbook), Sam Stern (The Teenage Chef) and Nora Sands (the cooking star of the TV show Jamie’s School Dinners).

Highlights include open fire cookery, bicycle-powered smoothie-making, and the photo exhibition Hungry Planet, showing what families eat across the globe.

Back by popular request is the festival’s giant pink pig — a 40 ft inflatable sow with farmyard drama inside.

New for 2009 are the Baby and Early Years Area, and the Chocolate Tent – featuring demonstrations by the UK’s top chocolatiers.

Entry costs £10 per car on the gate, or £3 per adult if you travel by bike, on foot, or on the shuttle bus from Didcot Parkway rail station.