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hi the recipe i use for chocolate concrete is simply

a packet of chocolate blamonge powder
225g plain flour (but deduct from this the weight of the blamonge powder - the pack i use usually weighs about 55g)
140g butter

rub til resembles breadcrumbs

add 55g caster sugar

make a dough

roll to required thickness and bake at 190 for about 20 mins

you can also use this as a biscuit recipe if you roll the dough out thinner

can anyone help and give the recipe for the cheese pie they made at schools, also the delicious fake cream they sqeezed on desserts such as lemon tart!!!!!

can anyone help and give the recipe for the cheese pie they made at schools, also the delicious fake cream they sqeezed on desserts such as lemon tart!!!!!

Gypsy tart! my favourite school pudding and I still make it now and am known for it by the family. If you want a simple recipe I have used and adapted to suit me, here it is.

1 pastry case
1 small tinned of evaporated milk (chilled in fridge for at least 24 hours)
10 - 12 oz of soft dark brown sugar (this is the only sugar I have ever got to work)

Beat the evaporated milk in a chilled mixing bowl with an electric whisk until it peaks like a meringue mixture does. then slowly whisk in the sugar and beat until it goes an even colour and falls from the beaters (once they are turned off) in ribbons, you can whisk for as long as you like I usually beat for five minutes. Pour the mixture into the pastry case and cook in a preheated oven gas 4 for 5 minutes
Hope this helps Alexandra but if you do make it don't make it in a hot kitchen or the milk won't turn.

We didn't have the chocolate concrete but I will give the recipe a try. We did have that pastry, jam, coconut thing and I hated it cos we were served that with warm milk

many thanks for the recipe for chocolate crunch even though catering size ill try my best to reduce the recipe.i tried on www.recipecottage .com but couldnt find it thanks anyway its probably me im new to this ::

Hi Alexandra, if you look under this heading "Recipes" there is a thread called "Gary's Gypsy Tart" and someone has posted a recipe for this pudding on there. Hope this helps.

ive to try that recipe,can anyone remember "gypsy tart"it had a pastry base and a topping that tasted like toffee.

Right, I managed to find an old recipe I was given a few years ago over the weekend too. But I seemed to remember that it was very hard (very much concrete!). The ones I had at school were crisp on the outside, but quite gooey in the centre. So I combined the two recipes

Ingredients

300g margarine (melted)
300g granulated sugar
50g cocoa powder
300g self raising flour
100g plain flour
2 eggs (beaten)
1 tbsp vanilla essence (optional)
Extra granulated sugar for topping

Preheat the oven to GM3

Grease tin and set aside.

Mix all the dry ingredients in a mixing bowl.
Add melted margarine and vanilla essence (if using) until mixture resembles a paste.
Add beaten eggs and mix again.
Place in well greaased 1 inch baking tray, and spread out to equal density throughout mixture.
Slightly score top of mixture with back of fork, sprinkle top with cold water and sprinkle over the extra sugar.
Bake on shelf about half way in oven for about an 60-75mins. For best results, check after 45mins.
When cooked, cut into shape whilst still warm.

Enjoy!

Note: I baked mines just below the middle of the oven for an hour and it was still slightly gooey and possibly undercooked in the centre. However, there were no complaints from my family Also, I used a tin that was 12x10 and just patted out the mixture to fill the tin.

Hello Ysl can't wait for the revised recipe glad you enjoyed it.

Hi all!

Just quickly want to say that I made a chocolate concrete yesterday and it was fine - crunchy on the outside but still quite gooey in the centre :D I'll post the recipe later

Just going back to the yummy chocolate pud, we had chocolate custard with ours! IT WAS GORGEOUS! Especially if you mixed it up into a sort of mush! We also had a wierd chocolate topped, orange jelly with pastry base 'thing'. That was disgusting ....... almost as bad as semolina!

I don't remember this one. My most vivid memories of our school dinners are of a birdsnest of fish bones that used to be called fish and was served every Friday. This pudding sounds good. I'll be watching for a good recipe.

YSL make up the whole amount and then you can send some on to us LOL
If you do manage to cut down the ingredients to a suitable portion can you let us know the revised amounts. Thanks

LOL!!!

Thank you EVER so much karen! I must admit, I'm still laughing at the thought of having to grease FIVE tart tins.. And then dividing each tin into 20 portions! SUPERB!

I shall make it this weekend (on a much smaller scale) and let you all know how I got on

Sharne you are probably not as old as us we didn't have a choice the meal was put in front of you and you had to eat it even if it was liver mash and mushy peas. But you tend to forget the bad meals and hanker after the ones you liked

I feel like I missed out.Lunch at my school was no way near as interesting as you guys had it. My school served chips and sanwiches for lunch and pudding was a lukewarm forest fruit yoghurt, no pink custard or warm milk. I do remember getting milk in junior school though, being chosen as milk monitor was once of my geatest achivements!

i have just been emailed this recipe from the local school caterers I hope this is what you are looking for. Remember this amount will feed up to 100 kids
Dear Karen,

I am writing to you regarding your recent enquiry about Chocolate Concrete.
I have found the following recipe which I hope helps you to reminice!

Please note that the quantities are for 80-100 children, so you may have to
scale down the ingredients!


*****Chocolate Crunch*****
* Ingredients
Margarine (hard) = 1.2 kilo
Granulated sugar = 1.2 kilo
Cocoa powder = 225 gram
Eggs = 11
Plain Flour = 1.575 kilo
Wholemeal flour = 0.6 kilo
Vanilla essence = 10 ml
Granulated sugar = 0.28 kilo

* Method
Grease 5 tart tins.
Light oven gas reg 3/ or 325 farenheit.

1. Melt fat in a thick bottomed saucepan.
2. Add the fat to the 1.2 kilo of sugar, cocoa, flour and essence, then mix
in the beaten eggs.
3. Divide the mixture equally between the tart tins and press down well.
4. Brush tops with water and sprinkle with 280g sugar.
5. Bake for 25 minuted approximately until sugar on tops looks crunchy.
6. Remove from oven. Divipde each tart tin into 20 portions whilst still
warm.


I hope this is the one, happy baking!

Jo Young
Marketing Administration Assistant
Initial Catering Services

Oh my goodness.....we used to also get given that coconut/jam sandwich affair. I loathed it too!! Didn't like dessicated coconut then, & I don't like it now. It was always served with custard at our school, so I just had the custard (gloriously lumpy with thick skin on top. Yum, yum!!)

EXCELLENT STUFF!

Thanks very much karen!

I never got semolina when I was at school.. I remember this horrid thing that was a pastry base, a layer of jam, then it was topped with dessicated coconut and strips of more pastry in a criss-cross pattern. I hated it so much that I wasn't allowed to go and play outside because I refused to eat it. Heh, would you say that I was traumatised by that experience as a child? :p

Hello I have emailed the school catering service in our area and they have promised to try to find the recipe for chocolate concrete that was served in the years before health conscious meals. So watch this space

Frozen bits in the milk?

Ahh, that reminds me of when we used to get the little half bottle of milk with a straw. Sometimes the top half inch was a plug of ice if the crate had been sitting outside.

And you are right: summer milk was yuk! It always seemed nearly 'off'.

We used to get in trouble if we tried to drink it without the straw.

And thinking of milk, whatever happened to the Blue Tits who used to peck through the foil? We still have loads of Blue Tits around but they have definitely gone off milk.

Maybe they know something we don't... :-)

Hi Sualdam, gosh that takes me back - I remember chocolate concrete and the pink custard - yuck (hated it!!!!!!!), semolina - another yuck (looked just like frogspawn), also the "mashed" potatoes (still don't like mashed potatoes now, although I do like mashed swede or parsnip - must be something about the dollop of the potatoes!!!!!!!).

We also had the brushed aluminium jugs, but not the weak tea/coffee, instead we had warm milk in the summer (not deliberately - it was never kept cold) and cold milk in the winter - if we were really lucky it came with frozen bits in it !!!!!! Can't drink milk by itself to this day after having to have it at School.

Happy days????????? Not as far as School dinnners and milk were concerned. :-)

I can remember a chocolate sponge with custard (and sometimes the custard WAS pink and tasted of some fruit) but it wan't particularly hard.

But that got me thinking about the other school dinners and features thereof (not thought about these for years):

- sponge with icing on it (my favourite)

- sponge that tasted like it had chillies in it (I think it was ginger) - I hated that one

- doughnut with jam on it (so-so)

- semolina with a dollop of jam (made me feel sick to see people stirring the jam in - why do kids always mess with their food?)

- Rice Pudding with a dollop of jam (the rice grains were the size of a decent marble - not like the stuff my mum used to get out of a tin)

- that dark green wad of cabbage you used to get with the roast beef/pork and potatoes

- the roast potatoes (picked straight from the stone quarry)

- that horrible grey slab of liver you used to get with mashed potato (you could see all the blood vessel tubes in it. Ugh).

- That perfectly spherical dollop of mashed potato with the lumps in it (from whence came my lifelong hatred of anything 'mashed')

- The tea or weak coffee you used to drink out of glass tumblers (not sure if this was just my school, though)

- those brushed aluminium jugs (red, orange, green, blue) they used to serve water out of (may also have been localised)

I used to love school dinners even the liver with mushy peas and mash and spam fritters and a lovely lime mousse well it was green anyway. If you do a google search for school dinner recipes some caterers provide the recipes for you