"Yorkshire pudding" as a solid dough-slab (and other strange interpretations served up by school kitchens)

[IDontCareWhatTheBoxSaysCottonBudsAreForEars]

I don't know if it was just my school, or whether it was a regional thing. And I don't know whether it was the intended result, or just the (repeated) consequence of trying to make Yorkshire pudding for 300 for the least possible cost in time and ingredients.

But my 90s primary school's version of Yorkshire pudding was an approx. 8cm by 8cm by 2cm solid cuboid of slightly damp, completely airless substance, with the same slightly yellowish-white colour throughout and no apparent browning on any surface. It was impressively filling, but with no other notable qualities whatsoever.

It was… resilient. I can only describe the texture as somewhere between fufu (the dense West African mouldable doughy balls made of various pounded starches and used for dipping in soup) and custard tart filling, and the flavour as "Well, this appears to be human-compatible sustenance of some kind".

There was also "Bakewell tart", which was a similarly-sized rectangle composed of a thin layer of wettish wholemeal pastry (the kitchens had converted to wholemeal everything at some point, which didn't improve palatability — the wholemeal pasta, in particular, seemed to go cold within seconds of being cooked), a smear of jam, a layer of sponge, and a sprinkle of desiccated coconut. I'm aware that there's controversy over Bakewell tart as it is, and its relationship to the Bakewell pudding, but wholemeal pastry, sponge and desiccated coconut has to be pushing it a bit. Was still pretty tasty, though, especially with a ladle or two of custard on it.

And so many other things, too. A lot of them perfectly nice, but so different from what you'd expect that I feel like it would've made more sense to give it a different name. (Cheese and tomato flan, perhaps, instead of "pizza".) I get that recipes need to be adapted for the budget and the circumstances, but sometimes what was written on the dinner board seemed to be a different thing entirely to what ended up on your plate.

Did anyone else's school (or other institutional canteen) have any of these, er, divergent versions of well-known dishes?

And can anyone tell me what was going on with those Yorkshire puddings? There's no way they didn't know what they were doing serving up those things year after year. Someone, somewhere, wholeheartedly believes that that's what a Yorkshire pudding is and should be.

We used to get a normal breadbun with a bit of white icing on top, as a pudding.

A budget attempt at an iced finger.

Do people eat iced fingers nowadays? I’m sure my mum used to buy them in M&S but I haven’t seen one in years.

My Nan used to make yorkies like that. We would fight for the corner bits lol.

Hmm. I suspect you grew up quite close to where I did, as not only were iced fingers and normal round breadbuns with icing on a common substitute for a real pudding, but we called breadbuns breadbuns, too.

To be fair, though, an iced finger is usually made of standard bread too, I think? Just kind of long. A bridge roll, or something. I remember the disappointment I felt as a kid the time I was taken to the bakery to choose anything I wanted, picked the iced finger because it looked delicious, and discovered I'd been tricked by a bready impostor.

So it must be a deliberate technique, then? Cause I've made Yorkshire pudding in a tray (for toad in the hole) and if you use the standard batter recipe, it still puffs up and develops an internal texture like normal Yorkshire pudding, even if it falls in a few places afterwards.

We used to have 'pizza' that was tomato puree and a sprinkle of cheese on half a soft bread roll. It wasn't pizza, but it was quite nice in an odd sort of way.

We also used to have marble sponge that tasted of nothing. I've no idea how that was achieved. Cake texture, but no flavour of anything at all.

I’m older than you, but did you get the green mint custard? Every time I see someone running in a bright green top it reminds me of it.
I'm sure it had a bottle of peppermint flavouring in it.

Nubbled, yes on a square of chocolate cake, they were very generous with the custard too.

Granny, we had the flavourless marbled sponge! I used to try and eat the plain and "chocolate" parts as separately as possible, to see if I could squeeze out a smidgen of flavour from at least the brown parts, but no.

Nubbled, sadly, no. Yellow custard or chocolate custard. I think we might have had pink custard once or twice but that could be a false memory. Mint custard on chocolate sponge sounds pretty nice, though.

Sometimes we had it with pink custard which also tasted of nothing!

We had school cake but with pastry? I loved it!

So pastry topped with jam, then sponge then icing and sprinkles

@fivebyfivebuffy Sounds tasty! Lemme guess, they called it duck à l'orange.

Our canteen at secondary school used to serve hotdogs with chopped raw onions on them (mid 80s). Also used to sell cans of shandy which seems odd now - alcohol content was negligible, it was Panda shandy not Bass.

My Mum made yorkies like that but didn’t try to pretend they were yorkies, she just called it “batter” 😂

I've no idea what my secondary school canteen served — they only had capacity to feed a fraction of the school, and I was one of the remaining majority who went over the road to get chips

So it's definitely an actual thing, then, PrincessPeache…