Thursday, 21 February 2013

chapter XXIII - school meal desserts 01

school meal desserts
After suffering the mostly terrible main courses, you at least had the joy of a dessert to look forward to. Well with a few exceptions that is; like sago (frogspawn) and jam <shuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuder>

cheese and biscuits
This was my all time favourite; and remains so until this day. Give me a cheese platter over a sweet dessert anytime. A good blue veined cheese like Stilton, drizzled with a little bit of honey is pure heaven!

We used to have cheese and biscuits as a once in a blue moon treat, when I was a teenager at Tamar Secondary School, Plymouth. 

We would have a few Jacob's cream crackers, a slab of good old English cheddar, an apple and strange as it may seem these days; a jug of milky, sweet, hot coffee placed on our table. The coffee drunk from mutli coloured plastic beakers The jugs as I recall, were always coloured metalic one's, strange the things we remember. Maybe this is where my passion for all cheeses and all coffee was born, and in particular cheddar and latte. 

apple crumble
This is another one of those; hated it!... love it! When it was served to us in my primary school in Wales (Penguylan School) it used to make me dry reach, I disliked it so much. But yet again I have grown to adore this dessert. In school is was always apple crumble, but not only now do I worship any form of fruit crumble, but love using the crumble topping in or on many other desserts including ice cream.

So easy to make and a great standby dessert, when one is needed in a hurry. In days gone by or professionally we would use freshly made stewed fruits or compote. But it can so easily be made with tinned fruit or frozen berry mix. The tinned fruit is simply drained and placed in to the dish (with maybe some dried fruits; currants, dried cranberries etc), or the frozen berried placed directly into the dish (no defrosting required) and the crumble mixture placed on top.

It can be made as a large family dish, or made in small individual ceramic ramekins or similar. 

recipe - basic crumble recipe
200 gm flour, plain white
100 gm butter
050 gm castor sugar

recipe - method of production
Rub the flour and butter together to form a breadcrumb like mix and mix in the sugar, or place all ingredients into a food processor and blitz until a crumble like texture is achieved. 

I like experimenting with many crumble recipes, and straying from the basic recipe; replacing 50% of the flour with toasted rolled oats, using wholemeal flour, adding different chopped nuts (my favourite of which has to  be a toss up between pistachios and macadamias) adding ground a ground spice like cinnamon or nutmeg or ginger. Or making a flap jack recipe, layering it very thin, baking it and then blitzing it in a food processor once cool.


caramal slice
Somewhere at sometime, one school used to serve a caramel slice for dessert. It had a biscuit like base, and one or three other layers that included some type of caramel toffee. That caramel was similar to the one found in a commercial chocolate bar, who's name escapes me; it was a light caramel coloured chocolate that made or may not have had a soft centre. Both that chocolate bar and the slice I did not care for anyway.

cornflake pudding, cake or slice
I cannot remember for the life of me what the dessert was. But I have recollections of something with cornflakes on it or in it and possibly toffee?

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