10 School Dinner Puddings That Taste Like Childhood
I don’t have children, but given the scores of photos currently filling my social media feeds featuring small kids in sparkly new uniforms, carefully packed rucksacks and pristine water bottles, I know exactly what time of year it is.
It’s back-to-school time.
When I was a kid, my mum insisted on packed lunches, so I never got to experience the delights of school dinners until I reached the heady heights of the high school canteen.
And this was the 1990s. Jamie Oliver hadn’t got involved yet. Nobody appeared particularly concerned about how much sugar, salt or fat we were consuming, and we were happily tucking into catastrophic amounts of absolute tosh.
Chips seemed to constitute an entire food group. Beige was a perfectly acceptable colour for a meal. And if something could be served with gravy, custard or preferably both — although perhaps not at the same time — all the better.
Would I want to eat like that every day now? Absolutely not.
But if there’s one thing I think we can all agree on, school puddings were unrivalled.
Jam roly-poly. Chocolate concrete. Cornflake tart. Great slabs of sponge cut into squares. Jam and coconut cake. And, of course, custard in colours that custard had absolutely no business being.
There was no attempt at finesse. Nobody was piping a quenelle onto the side or adding a salted caramel crumb. You got a big square of pudding in a bowl and a dinner lady armed with a ladle.
And frankly, that was all it needed.
Special thanks must therefore go to those lovely dinner ladies who ladled lashings of pink custard over jam roly-poly without a moment’s hesitation. You created an everlasting memory.
We’ve previously looked back at some of the classic British school dinner desserts we still crave, but with September here and schools starting again, it feels like the perfect excuse to take things a little further.
This time, we’re making them.
From chocolate concrete and cornflake tart to syrup sponge and the gloriously simple school cake that’s suddenly having something of a renaissance, these are 10 old-school pudding recipes that taste like childhood.
Aprons on.
We’re going back to school.
1. School Cake With Sprinkles
We have to start here.
School cake is perhaps the simplest cake imaginable: vanilla sponge, white icing and enough hundreds and thousands to make your kitchen floor vaguely colourful for the next three weeks.
And yet it’s brilliant.
I’ve already written a full guide to how to make the perfect school cake, because there’s slightly more to getting that lovely soft sponge and properly set icing right than its simplicity suggests.
Ingredients
For the sponge:
- 225g unsalted butter, softened
- 225g caster sugar
- 4 large eggs
- 225g self-raising flour
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 2 tbsp milk
For the icing:
- 200g icing sugar
- 2–3 tbsp water
- Hundreds and thousands
Method
Heat the oven to 180°C/160°C fan and line a 20 x 30cm baking tin.
Beat the butter and caster sugar together until pale and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition.
Fold in the flour, followed by the vanilla and enough milk to loosen the mixture slightly.
Spoon into the tin, level the top and bake for 25–30 minutes, or until golden and a skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean.
Leave the cake to cool completely.
Gradually add the water to the icing sugar until you have a thick icing that will spread without running straight off the cake. Cover the sponge and immediately scatter over the sprinkles.
Leave the icing to set before cutting into generous squares.
For the full school dinner experience: serve with warm custard. Pink is strongly encouraged.
2. Chocolate Concrete With Pink Custard
Now we’re talking.
Depending on where you grew up, you may remember this as chocolate concrete, chocolate crunch or chocolate cement. None of those names sounds particularly appetising, admittedly, but somehow we all knew exactly what was meant.
It’s not quite cake and it’s not quite biscuit. It’s dense, chocolatey, slightly crumbly and absolutely crying out for a lake of custard.
Ingredients
- 200g unsalted butter
- 200g caster sugar
- 300g plain flour
- 40g cocoa powder
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1 large egg
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- Caster sugar, for sprinkling
Method
Heat the oven to 180°C/160°C fan and line a 20 x 30cm tin.
Melt the butter and allow it to cool for a few minutes.
Mix the sugar, flour, cocoa powder and baking powder in a large bowl. Add the melted butter, egg and vanilla and mix until everything comes together.
Press the mixture firmly and evenly into the prepared tin.
Bake for around 20–25 minutes. Don’t be tempted to keep baking until it becomes rock hard; it will firm considerably as it cools.
Scatter a little caster sugar over the top while still warm, then cut into squares.
And the Pink Custard?
Make around 500ml of vanilla custard and add a tiny amount of pink food colouring.
No strawberries. No raspberry coulis. No attempts to elevate it.
It needs to be unnaturally pink. That’s rather the point.
3. Cornflake Tart
Cornflake tart is one of those dishes that sounds faintly ridiculous when you try to explain it to someone who didn’t grow up eating it.
Pastry. Jam. Cornflakes.
Pudding.
Somehow it works.
The cornflakes become sticky and chewy around the edges thanks to golden syrup, the jam provides a sharp fruity layer underneath and the pastry holds the whole glorious creation together.
Ingredients
- 1 sheet ready-rolled shortcrust pastry
- 150g raspberry or strawberry jam
- 75g unsalted butter
- 100g golden syrup
- 30g soft brown sugar
- 150g cornflakes
Method
Heat the oven to 190°C/170°C fan.
Line a 23cm tart tin with the pastry, trim the edges and prick the base with a fork.
Line with baking paper and baking beans and bake for 15 minutes. Remove the beans and paper and return to the oven for another 5 minutes.
Meanwhile, put the butter, golden syrup and brown sugar into a saucepan and heat gently until melted and combined.
Remove from the heat and carefully fold through the cornflakes. Try not to pulverise them — we want cornflake tart, not cornflake dust.
Spread the jam over the pastry base and spoon the sticky cornflake mixture on top.
Return to the oven for 8–10 minutes.
Serve warm with custard.
Lots of it.
4. Jam and Coconut Sponge
Another enormous tray of sponge destined to be hacked into squares, and another example of school dinner simplicity being far better than it has any right to be.
The combination of vanilla sponge, raspberry jam and coconut is one I don’t encounter very often outside the world of retro baking, which probably explains why the first mouthful is capable of transporting you back several decades.
Ingredients
- 225g unsalted butter, softened
- 225g caster sugar
- 4 large eggs
- 225g self-raising flour
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 2 tbsp milk
- 150g raspberry jam
- 50g desiccated coconut
Method
Heat the oven to 180°C/160°C fan and line a 20 x 30cm tin.
Beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy before gradually beating in the eggs.
Fold in the flour, vanilla and milk.
Spread the mixture evenly into the tin and bake for 25–30 minutes, until risen and golden.
Allow it to cool slightly.
Warm the jam very gently so it becomes easier to spread, then cover the top of the sponge right to the edges.
Scatter generously with desiccated coconut.
You can eat this cold as a traybake, but we’re discussing school dinners.
Get the custard out.
5. Jam Roly-Poly
This might be the pudding I associate most strongly with proper old-fashioned school dinners.
A great slice of rolled pudding, a spiral of bright red jam running through the middle and so much custard you could barely see what was underneath.
Beautiful.
Traditional jam roly-poly is made with suet, and we’re not going to start messing around with it now.
Ingredients
- 250g self-raising flour
- Pinch of salt
- 125g shredded suet
- Around 150ml milk
- 150g raspberry jam
Method
Heat the oven to 200°C/180°C fan.
Mix the flour, salt and suet in a large bowl.
Gradually add the milk until everything comes together into a soft dough. You may not need every last drop.
Turn onto a lightly floured surface and roll into a rectangle approximately 25 x 30cm.
Spread the jam across the dough, leaving a small border around the outside.
Starting from one of the short sides, roll it up like a Swiss roll and pinch the ends closed.
Wrap loosely in baking parchment and then foil, leaving some room for the pudding to expand.
Place seam-side down in a roasting tin and bake for around 45 minutes.
Carefully unwrap, cut into thick slices and serve immediately.
Pink custard, please. And don’t be shy with the ladle.
6. Golden Syrup Sponge
This is proper cold-weather pudding.
A light sponge sitting on a gloriously sticky layer of golden syrup, turned out so the syrup runs down the sides and then drowned in hot custard.
There are times when restraint is admirable.
This isn’t one of them.
Ingredients
- 4 tbsp golden syrup, plus extra to serve
- 175g unsalted butter, softened
- 175g caster sugar
- 3 large eggs
- 175g self-raising flour
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 2 tbsp milk
Method
Heat the oven to 180°C/160°C fan.
Grease a 1.2-litre pudding basin thoroughly and spoon the golden syrup into the bottom.
Beat the butter and sugar until pale and fluffy, then gradually add the eggs.
Fold through the flour, vanilla and milk.
Carefully spoon the sponge mixture over the golden syrup and level the top.
Cover the basin with buttered foil and place it inside a deep roasting tin. Pour boiling water into the tin until it reaches roughly halfway up the side of the basin.
Bake for around 1 hour 15 minutes, checking occasionally that the roasting tin hasn’t boiled dry.
Carefully turn the pudding onto a serving plate.
Add another little drizzle of golden syrup if you’re feeling particularly enthusiastic.
Then custard.
7. Apple Crumble and Custard
Apple crumble wasn’t confined to the school canteen, of course, but there’s no way I could put together a list of old-school puddings without including it.
And September is exactly when crumble starts sounding like an excellent idea again.
I like plenty of fruit underneath and a proper craggy crumble topping — not a thin dusting that disappears as soon as you introduce the custard.
Ingredients
For the apples:
- 750g Bramley apples
- 60g caster sugar
- 1 tsp ground cinnamon
- 1 tbsp water
For the crumble:
- 200g plain flour
- 100g cold unsalted butter, cubed
- 100g demerara sugar
Method
Heat the oven to 190°C/170°C fan.
Peel, core and slice the apples and place them in a baking dish with the caster sugar, cinnamon and water.
Put the flour and butter into a bowl and rub together with your fingertips until you have a rough breadcrumb texture. Don’t worry about the occasional larger buttery lump — those bits become deliciously crisp.
Stir through the demerara sugar.
Pile the crumble mixture over the apples without pressing it down.
Bake for 35–40 minutes, until the topping is golden and you can see the apple bubbling around the edges.
Leave it for five minutes before serving.
Then pour over hot custard until all thoughts of portion control have disappeared.
8. Rice Pudding With Jam
Ah, the skin.
I suspect every school dining hall contained two distinct camps: those who thought the skin on rice pudding was a delicacy and those who regarded its presence as a personal attack.
Whichever side you were on, proper baked rice pudding deserves its place here.
And it needs jam.
Ingredients
- 100g pudding rice
- 50g caster sugar
- 1 litre whole milk
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 25g unsalted butter
- Freshly grated nutmeg
- Raspberry jam, to serve
Method
Heat the oven to 150°C/130°C fan.
Butter a large ovenproof dish.
Add the pudding rice and sugar, then pour over the milk and vanilla and give everything a good stir.
Dot the butter over the surface and grate over a little nutmeg.
Bake for around 2 hours. Give it a stir after the first 30 minutes and then leave it alone so that distinctive golden skin can form.
Spoon into bowls while warm and add a generous blob of raspberry jam.
Then swirl it through until the pudding turns pink.
9. Semolina Pudding
If rice pudding divided opinion, semolina could clear a room.
I know people who remember it with enormous affection and others who can apparently still feel the horror of seeing a bowl of it approaching the table.
But we’re recreating school dinners here, not rewriting history to make ourselves look sophisticated.
So semolina stays.
Ingredients
- 600ml whole milk
- 60g fine semolina
- 30g caster sugar
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- Raspberry or strawberry jam, to serve
Method
Pour the milk into a saucepan and slowly bring it almost to the boil.
Reduce the heat and gradually whisk in the semolina.
Cook gently for 8–10 minutes, stirring frequently, until thick and creamy.
Stir in the sugar and vanilla.
Spoon into bowls and add a blob of jam to the middle.
If you were one of the children who immediately stirred the jam through the whole bowl until everything turned pink, I salute you.
10. Chocolate Sponge With Chocolate Custard
And finally, we’re ending exactly as a list about school puddings should end.
With chocolate.
This isn’t the place for ganache, chocolate curls, elaborate buttercream or anything else that would have completely bewildered a 1990s school dinner lady.
We need a warm chocolate sponge cut into an unapologetically large square.
And we need chocolate custard.
Ingredients
For the sponge:
- 200g unsalted butter, softened
- 200g caster sugar
- 4 large eggs
- 175g self-raising flour
- 30g cocoa powder
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 2 tbsp milk
For the chocolate custard:
- 500ml vanilla custard
- 2 tbsp cocoa powder
- 50g dark chocolate, finely chopped
Method
Heat the oven to 180°C/160°C fan and line a 20 x 30cm baking tin.
Beat the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.
Gradually beat in the eggs.
Sift together the flour and cocoa and gently fold them into the mixture. Add the vanilla and enough milk to give you a soft dropping consistency.
Spread into the tin and bake for approximately 25 minutes, or until the sponge springs back when gently pressed.
While the cake is baking, gently heat the custard.
Whisk in the cocoa powder, followed by the chopped chocolate, and stir until smooth.
Cut the warm sponge into squares, put one in a bowl and pour the chocolate custard straight over it.
No garnish required.
Why Were School Puddings So Good?
I’ve been thinking about this, and I’m not entirely convinced that school puddings actually were the culinary masterpieces we remember them being.
I think it’s what they represent.
They were uncomplicated. They arrived in enormous trays. They were made to feed hundreds of hungry children rather than photograph beautifully for Instagram. Nobody was worried about presentation and nobody had invented the word deconstructed yet.
And perhaps that’s precisely why they still have such appeal.
These aren’t desserts that require specialist equipment, a cupboard full of unusual ingredients or half a day in the kitchen. They’re made from things like flour, butter, sugar, eggs, jam, golden syrup and custard.
Proper puddings.
There’s also something particularly lovely about making them at this time of year.
September might mean shiny new shoes, school runs and packed lunches for today’s children, but for the rest of us it can mean remembering a slightly different version of back to school.
One involving plastic trays, questionable main courses and the glorious discovery that today’s pudding was chocolate sponge.
So while I won’t be buying a new pencil case this September, I may well be making a tray of jam and coconut sponge.
And somewhere out there, I hope one of those legendary dinner ladies is still holding a custard ladle.
Because I could do with a bit more, please.
Joanne Brook-Smith is a writer and editor with two decades of publishing experience. She launched Crave Magazine during the Covid period to create a fresh, inspiring space for food, travel and lifestyle content.