Let’s make a pineapple upside-down cake! Five classic school recipes to make with your own kids

Remember all those culinary masterpieces you brought home from school and made your family eat? Here’s how to give your own kids a little taste of your history by recreating five of the best ‘old school’ recipes…

by Diane Trembath

In the olden days, before there was Food Technology GCSE, we had Home Economics – fondly known as ‘home ec’. And before that, ‘domestic science’, and plain old ‘cookery classes’. 

Everyone who attended Home Ec classes can remember their favourite recipes (rock cakes and chocolate cornflake cakes feature) and, occasionally, the less than favourite. Dee Simpson has never forgotten the horror of her first home ec class in the 1960s: ‘We had to prepare soused herring, which included scaling and gutting the herring. Can you imagine? I couldn’t go near a fish for years after that.’ Despite the herring incident, Dee went on to become a professional cook.

We’ve picked five of the most popular recipes for you to make at home. Get the kids involved, while regaling them with tales of those unforgettable triumphs and the tragedies in the domestic science block.  We’ve updated recipes by adding vegetarian or vegan alternatives where appropriate and, yes, we’ve included the rock cakes.

Depending on their age, children can do much of the prep, include washing veg, adding dry and wet ingredients, stirring mixtures and, with the right child-safe knives, they can help with chopping, cutting and slicing too – properly supervised, of course.

The technical stuff: we’ve listed temperatures in this order: standard electric oven/fan-assisted electric oven/gas oven, and all measurements are given in metric or spoon quantities. If you have an Aga, we’re pretty sure you’ll know what to put where, and for how long! 

1) Pineapple upside-down cake

The jolliest of cakes and, trust us, tinned pineapple rings are just fine. (Better, in fact, than freshly sliced.)

Ingredients

Butter or vegetarian spread for greasing, 2 tbspns granulated sugar, 6 slices canned pineapple in juice (and 3 tbsps of the juice), 75g glace cherries (11 or 12 in total), 100g plain flour, 1 tsp baking powder, ¼ tsp bicarbonate of soda, 100g soft butter or vegetarian spread, 100g caster sugar, 2 large free-range eggs

How to prepare

• Preheat the oven to 200°C/180° fan assisted/Gas 6 
• Butter a tarte tatin tin (approximately 24cm wide at the top and 20cm wide at the bottom) or a 23cm cake tin (not loose-bottomed or springform).
• Sprinkle the granulated sugar onto the greased base, and place the pineapple slices to make a circular pattern.
• Pop a glace cherry into each ring, and then put one in each of the spaces between the rings.
• Put the flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda, butter, caster sugar and eggs into a food processor and mix until the batter is smooth. Add the pineapple juice to thin it a little.
• Pour the mixture carefully over the pineapple rings to just cover them and spread out gently with a palette knife.
• Bake for 30 minutes, take out of the oven, allow to stand for up to 15 minutes, then gently run a spatula around the inside edge of the tin. Put a plate on top, hold tin and plate firmly with both hands, take a deep breath, then turn the whole thing upside-down.

2) Leek and potato soup

Filling and comforting – the perfect winter warmer after a hard day at work, at school, or on the sports field.

Ingredients

1 onion, 1 large potato, 1 leek, 500ml water, 1 chicken or vegetable stock cube, a pinch of salt and ground black pepper, 15ml of sunflower oil, 50ml of milk or plant milk, handful of fresh chives

How to prepare

• Wash the potato and leek. 
• Peel the potato and onion.
• Dice the potato, finely chop the onion, and slice the leek.
• Warm the oil in a thick-bottomed saucepan and gently fry the vegetables for three to four minutes until slightly softened.
• Add the water, stock cube, salt and pepper and bring to the boil.
• Turn down the heat and simmer for 30 minutes.
• Add the milk and reheat. If your kids are averse to chunks of vegetables in soup, just blend the soup until it’s smooth, then reheat.
• Chop the chives and sprinkle on top of soup before serving.

Serve with hunks of warm granary bread or rolls and butter or vegetarian/vegan spread.

3) Macaroni Cheese (or Mac ‘n’ Cheese if you must!)  

Ingredients

25g butter or vegetarian spread (such as Pure or Vitalife, which are both vegan), 2 tbsps of cornflour, 250ml dairy or plant milk, 50g strong Cheddar cheese (or double that quantity if you like a really cheesy macaroni), 100g macaroni, salt and pepper 

How to prepare

• Fill a large saucepan with water, add a pinch of salt, and bring to the boil.
• While the water is coming to the boil, grate the cheese.
• In a smaller saucepan, blend the cornflour with some of the milk until it is smooth. Add the rest of the milk and butter or spread to the cornflour mix and add salt and pepper to taste. (We like to add a little Dijon mustard, plus a pinch of both nutmeg and cayenne pepper to the mixture, for a bit of a kick, but if you think these extras might be a step too far for your kids, just omit!) 
• Add macaroni to boiling water, stir briefly to prevent it sticking, and boil for 12 mins or following instructions on the packet.
• Heat the sauce and stir continuously until it reaches boiling point and then simmer for 2 minutes. 
• Remove sauce from heat and add two-thirds of the cheese and stir until cheese melts. 
• Drain the macaroni, put the drained macaroni back into the large saucepan, add the hot sauce and stir until mixed. (Try adding some very small steamed broccoli or cauliflower florets, petits pois  or sliced mushrooms to boost your kids’ veg intake.)
• Pour into an ovenproof dish, sprinkle the remaining cheese on top. (We sometimes add sliced tomatoes first, then the cheese, and finally – for a grown-up twist – a sprinkling of sesame seeds.) 
• Place under a preheated grill, or in the top of a preheated oven (200°C/180° fan assisted/Gas 6), until the cheese melts and turns golden brown. 

4) Unbeatable apple crumble

Ingredients

1kg Bramley cooking apples, sprinkle of granulated sugar, 1 tbsp water, 100g plain flour, 75g very cold butter or vegetarian spread, 50g rolled oats, 100g demerara sugar 

How to prepare

• Preheat the oven to 200°C/180° fan assisted/Gas 6.
• Wash the apples, cut into quarters, remove the cores and slice each piece in two. Put them into a pan and add a sprinkle of sugar to taste. Add the water and cook over a medium heat for about five minutes, until the apples begin to soften.
• Put the apple mixture in a shallow ovenproof pie dish.
• Cut the butter or spread, ideally straight from the fridge, into small cubes.
• Put the flour and cubed butter in a mixing bowl and, using a light touch, rub together with your fingertips until the mixture looks like breadcrumbs. (Kids love doing this.) If you’re pushed for time, blend flour and butter in a food processor for a few seconds – but it’s not as much fun.
• Add the oats and demerara sugar, stir and sprinkle over the apple mixture. 
• Place in the middle of the oven for 30 minutes, until crisp and golden brown on top.

You can ring the crumble changes in autumn… take the kids foraging for blackberries and add a good helping to the warmed apples before you top with the crumble mixture. For a grown-up twist, finely slice two or three pieces of stem ginger and add to the warmed apples, together with a drizzle of ginger syrup from the jar. When you’re preparing the crumble mixture, add a teaspooon of ground cinnamon. Heavenly aroma, divine taste! Serve with the best vanilla ice cream you can get your hands on or with lashings of custard.

5) Rock cakes

Everyone’s favourite teatime treat – so easy to make and even easier to eat.
 

Ingredients

225g self-raising flour 75g caster sugar, 1 tsp baking powder, 125g very cold unsalted butter or vegetarian/vegan spread cut into cubes, 150g dried fruit, 1 large free-range egg, 1 tbsp milk or plant milk, 2 tsp vanilla extract

How to prepare

• Preheat oven to 180°C/160°C fan assisted/Gas 4 and line a baking tray with baking parchment.
• Mix the flour, sugar and baking powder in a bowl and rub in the cubed butter until the mixture looks like breadcrumbs, then mix in the dried fruit.
• In a different bowl, beat together the egg, milk and vanilla extract.
• Add the egg mixture to the dry ingredients and stir with a spoon until it all forms a thick, lumpy dough. Add an extra teaspoon of milk if needed, to help the mixture stick together.
• Use two spoons to make golfball-sized portions of the mixture and place the portions on the baking tray. Leave a space between each portion – they become flatter and spread to twice  their size during baking. 
• Bake for 15–20 minutes, until golden brown. Allow to stand for a couple of minutes, then turn onto a wire rack to cool.

For another touch of tasty nostalgia – The 10 best (and strangest) sweets, snacks and treats from your childhood.

At the Children’s Furniture Company we believe kids’ furniture should be practical (which is why we coat it with three layers of paint to make it sweet-sticky finger-proof) but with a sprinkle of magic dust. Browse our children’s furniture here.