PRINCE CHARLES turned pudding aficionado as he learned how to make chocolate nibbles at the opening of a cooking school in Ayrshire.

Touring the new facility in the grounds of the 18th-Century Dumfries House mansion near Cumnock, the monarch-in-waiting chatted to teenagers trained in hospitality by a programme run by the Prince's Trust.

"Is that white chocolate?" Prince Charles said as he spotted a woman filling chocolate balls with cream and topping them with quartered blueberries. "You must need a steady hand - is it making you hungry?"

Many of the youngsters preparing canapés appeared charmed by the Prince as he asked about their backgrounds.

The Duke of Rothesay was in Ayrshire yesterday to open the Belling Hospitality Training Centre, the latest addition to Dumfries House, the stately home he helped save in 2007 and which has been redeveloped since then.

The centre has a state-of-the-art kitchen with mounted iPads to be used in training and a restaurant which can cater for 120 diners, seven days a week.

It will be the new home of the Prince's Trust's Get Into Hospitality programme which takes local 16- to 24-year-olds, many of whom left school without qualifications, and teaches them kitchen skills and front-of-house etiquette before getting them work placements.

Speaking to sponsors and local councillors who supported the initiative, Prince Charles said: "I could not be more thrilled that this project has come to fruition with an incredibly smart facility.

"Bit by bit it will be known and the students will be known as some of the highest skilled in the hospitality industry."

On the impact of Dumfries House he said: "I hope it will greatly contribute to this whole area and indeed to Scotland on a wider basis".

Lauren Dipiazza, an 18-year-old graduate from the programme who now works full-time at Dumfries House, credited the scheme with turning round her life.

"It has had a massive impact. My life is completely different from what it was last year," she said.

"I was staying in a horrible area with no money, no job, no career in front of me.

"Now I'm staying in a nice house with money and I can do things I want."

Prince Charles also toured the stonemasonry and carpeting facility on the estate and handed out certificates to students who had graduated in the programmes.