Angel delight cheesecake wtf?

[Angeldelightcheesefreak]

Very possibly BU with staff pressures, lack of funding etc but Dd yesterday was excited to be making cheesecake in technology at school. We love cheesecake so all good. The ingredients are provided for them. She came home and it's a digestive biscuit base, very thick, with a layer of chocolate angel delight mixed with cream cheese on top. It's tasty in an emergency food kind of way but cheesecake it is not.
Should schools not be teaching the children how to actually cook and to use proper ingredients for things? Luckily dd knows how to make a proper cheesecake and comes from a family of good cooks and bakers but others will think this is what cheesecake should be like and won't have the benefit of culinary knowledge at home. Why can't they teach proper dishes and techniques? Ok year 7 isn't cordon bleu but come on, angel delight cheesecake ffs. It's an abomination and an insult to cheesecake. I might make one of my chocolate cheesecakes and send it in to the teacher along with the recipe to show him or her what a cheesecake actually is. And don't get me started on the use of take away style plastic pots and cardboard boxes to bring things home in.

So far dd has made pineapple upside down cake-all good. Apple tart using ready made pastry-not good. And the angel delight abomination. Oh and some couscous.

Yes ok IABU, teachers, stress, budgets, Tory governments yada yada. And maybe I'm
A food snob 🤷🏼‍♀️

Please share with me your child's school food tech abominations. Please note I don't mean if your child has made a mess of the recipe but rather that the school has given them a shit recipe for bastardised dishes.

I feel better for that

OMG - I hear you and I can go one better...

My mum is really proud of her "cheesecake" creation which is in fact lime jelly, angel delight and not much else. To add insult to injury she puts sliced up grapes on top?!

There's no cheese - you can't call it cheesecake - my daughter refuses to eat it!

😱

Yes you sound like a food snob

Maybe some parents should stop expecting society to wipe their kids arses and teach them themselves. With the internet it's never been cheaper or easier to learn the basics and get recipes. Food practical lessons are counter productive and time consuming

Angel Delight cheesecake sounds really nice. No, it’s not cheesecake but it’s something easy to make, no actual cooking involved and it’s something that most of the kids would probably eat so it keeps them interested. I’d much rather they learned how to do basic things like that than attempt to cook something fancy that will cost loads of money in ingredients and electricity costs to cook, the kids will inevitably screw it up or not like it and it will all be wasted.

The only cooking my dc has done at school (he’s only in yr4) was some fairy cakes that they dyed various colours to see if they tasted different. The kids all had fun, some had never even made fairy cakes before in their life and all the cakes were eaten. That’s all I’d expect from food tech classes tbh.

Son had to make apple pie at senior school. Was told to bring in a packet of ready rolled pastry and a tin of apple.
That was in a proper cookery lesson as well.

And don't get me started on the use of take away style plastic pots and cardboard boxes to bring things home in

This may just be due to COVID. Usually our year 7s are asked to bring containers to take food home in but they wouldn’t be able to this year due to COVID apparently, our staff end of year buffet is being boxed up individually in take out containers for this reason. And my school aren’t even doing practical food lessons this year.

That’s not a cheesecake though. From what I know of the food lessons at the secondary I work at things are designed to be quick as it can be difficult to get kids to watch a demonstration, cook and then clean up and evaluate their work in a one hour slot. Even when they had double lessons it was a push.

How long is the lesson? An hour?

Not really enough time to make pastry, or a 'proper' cheesecake...

My DS is in Year 7, forked out ££ at the beginning of the year for all kinds of resources, think we have to provide ingredients for food tech though. All fine.
They've not even made it as far as the food tech room.

But yes OP very lazy teaching. I remember in Y7 making a fancy salad with these jazzy chopped tomatoes with a zig zag edge.

Why don’t you teach your kid to cook if you’re such a snob and then the school lessons become irrelevant?

I'm 43 and I remember one of our lessons was to make a sandwich

I was with you until you complained about the ready made pastry. Stop being a food snob - some kids won't have any kitchen skills and the ingredients cost money too, it was £25 a term for ingredients for dd until 14, then for gcse cost at least a couple of hundred, more I suspect. My girls can make puff pastry etc but just cutting apples is a step up for many who have only had ready made pies

The only downside of this is that it was chocolate Angel Delight, everyone knows butterscotch is the best. It's a non scary way of learning to cook

I had a Kitchenaid*, still can't make pastry for shit, Im a bloody good cook though.

*gave it to my Dd and her Bf.

She's learning about food hygiene and storage, food groups, chilling temperatures, and simple skills like chopping/crushing/mixing/spreading. It's not really about what goes in the dish.

To be honest I'd be more bothered that all the dishes they make seem to be cakes and desserts - far more useful to teach her how to make a healthy, filling meal surely?

@IHaveBrilloHair

I'm 43 and I remember one of our lessons was to make a sandwich

Yes! My y7 food tech I made:

1. Fruit Salad (I failed as I didn't cut the orange correctly)
2. Fruit Fool
3. Egg Sandwich

My son has apparently made:

• Chicken Fajitas
• Lasagne
• Cinnamon Rolls
• Some sort of rice cous cous salad
• Biscuits

I wouldn't know for sure as the little git has nailed them on the walk home every single week. I really fancied a cinnamon roll!

Sounds like a cheesecake to me 🤷

I'm not sure that it would to the list of 'emergency food' ideas though.

I never learned to cook anything decent in home economics. Literally the only thing I remember making was tuna pasta once. Tinned tuna, boiled pasta, bit of Mayo and sliced onions. Utterly pointless.

Also - a lot of cookbooks recommend ready made pastry - I know Jamie Oliver and I think Gordon/Delia/Nigella do too (sorry if I'm wrong) from a time/life POV. In fact, I think it was Jamie who said 'it's not worth making your own.'

We made cheese on toast. Well attempted to. The fire alarms went off (unconnected) and some people neglected to turn the grills off as they left the classroom. It was fortunate there wasn't a real fire.

Nothing wrong with ready made pastry, that’s teaching them to live in the real world. You’re not wrong about the cheesecake though, it should at least contain cheese.

Although my lessons weren’t one hour, they were always double periods, same as gym, so we would have had time to make something proper. We never did though. I let my kids help with making meals at home - that way they’re learning how to make the foods they actually eat which seems more sensible to me as basic cookery learning.

If you don’t want it, send it this way. It sounds delicious, the veritable taste of childhood. Slice some banana over the top.

It did have cream cheese in it so qualifies as cheesecake 🤷🏻‍♀️