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

I dream of the cookery teacher providing ingredients at a small cost, and Angel Delight cheesecake sounds right up my street.

Packing my youngest up every week with ingredients including 'an egg to glaze' is not my idea of sensible home economics . A whole class trying to safely transport an egg from home when half a dozen between them is more than enough, but woe betide any child that doesn't bring every single item listed!

I remember making a cheesecake that had a digestive base and then fruit yoghurt on the top that was set with gelatine!

I think any food tech classes should aim to teach basic food hygiene and focus on savoury recipes that might come in useful when living away from home at uni. Things like chopping up veg for a stir-fry, coming up with different sauces, how to cook different cuts of meat and know when it's ready.

My children are in Primary and they are learning these basics from helping prep dinner but there are lots of children where their parents may not have the time or means to teach them these things. I met a lot of people at uni who couldn't boil and egg or know how to cook pasta!

Cooking is a life skill that will help anyone and I think it should be taught as well as learning about basic finances - how to manage your money.

I was at school in the 60s, cookery wasn't great. I do remember doing a salad and the teacher said I hadn't arranged it nicely enough. Scones followed by rock cakes, fish cakes (I've never made them since) and a bread and butter pudding. I was at grammar school and cookery and needlework weren't considered very important. Needlework was making a fancy overall to wear for cookery.

Apparently you only needed to eat if you went to the secondary mod, or maybe they thought we'd all be highflying executives with a cook.

We had angel delight the other week as I saw it on the shelf and thought wow what a blast from the past, I loved it as a kid.

It was so rank that we each ate two mouthfuls and put it in the bin!!!

I'm with you linerforlife but my DH loves it, well he loves the banana one. I find it handy to have it in the cupboard to keep him happy.

@ancientgran

I was at school in the 60s, cookery wasn't great. I do remember doing a salad and the teacher said I hadn't arranged it nicely enough. Scones followed by rock cakes, fish cakes (I've never made them since) and a bread and butter pudding. I was at grammar school and cookery and needlework weren't considered very important. Needlework was making a fancy overall to wear for cookery.

Apparently you only needed to eat if you went to the secondary mod, or maybe they thought we'd all be highflying executives with a cook.

I went to grammar school and we were taught "proper cooking" also the basis of proper sewing including using a sewing machine. The expectation was that all of us would work for a living in some way, not expect to live off a husband and we should be able to look after ourselves too.

PS that was mid 60's

I’m sympathetic to your concerns.
There is obviously a growing gap in life skills around nutrition and cooking in our culture which needs to be addressed.
I hate that schools are having to fill so many of these gaps that should be part of parenting but if they don’t, we won’t ever get out of this obesity health crisis.
Someone has to break the cycle. Sadly, it will be the most vulnerable and disadvantaged students who will continue to suffer.

Angels delight cheesecake you say??? Is there a receipe for this ??
To be honest this sounds like a cheesecake that I’d be capable of making. My first and only attempt was an expensive have frozen half slop horror.
From food tech I remember I made:
Fruit salad (turned to mush during the day)
Meat loaf (absolutely rank)
Bread (set a tea towel on fire)
Shortbread (decent)

Clearly the lessons aren’t long enough. An hours enough to cook but not to evaluate and clear up afterwards too.

Why don’t they focus on hygiene, storage, basic techniques & prep skills? Once you know how to use a knife properly it makes life so much easier.

@JeanClaudeVanDammit

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.

It had cream cheese in it and that's what's normally on top of a cheesecake

I think teaching a quick and easy way to make something is a good thing, so many people choose convenience foods because no one has bloody time 🤷🏻‍♀️ Seems like a compromise between convenience and from scratch

There are time & budget restraints in school. Also , cut the teachers a break, does it really matter in the scheme of things with all that's gone on in the last year? Realistically, it's just to get them interested & aware re cooking & nutrition Just show them some different online recipes & they can experiment with those. Rhubarb & Ginger cheesecake is epically good.

Who can be bothered to make their own pastry? Waste of bloody time.

I heard of someone making a Victoria sponge - asked to bring in a packet mix and an egg Think her mum night have had words...

It kind of makes sense to me to use ready made pastry, unless we are talking a very advanced pastry chef type course.

Pastry is and always has been tricky. Don't overwork, keep chilled etc. My Mum was an awesome pastry maker and I have had a few successes but frankly many fails.

It could lead to stress, upset and problems with timing if the students had to do pastry from scratch. I have visions of rolling and re-rolling, patching holes and generally struggling.

An angel delight cheesecake 🥴 I've heard it all now 😂

Back in my day we had to supply the ingredients for everything we cooked and we brought in our own containers to take it back home.

Maybe the take away containers are something to do with covid restrictions?

YANBU. Cooking is a life skill, it's important to teach kids how to prepare food properly, how to follow recipes, what flavours work well together, basic meals, etc. Angel delight and cream is not a cheesecake! Schools should do better with this. There are plenty of things that can be prepared and cooked within a one-hour lesson.

Other memories of school cookery (a comp in the late 70s, early 80s) - revolting Eggs au Gratin and being taught to WASH UP.

I found a recipe - this one has three different flavours of AD for a sort of Neapolitan look
I think I would just do one and it would be butterscotch. Anyway it has the cheese / AD proportions for those asking.

www.delish.com/uk/cooking/recipes/a30440162/angel-delight-cheesecake/

There is no way this kind of cooking should be taught in school. It’s like something you would find in woman’s weekly in the 70s! I’m surprised kids these days would even know what angle delight is.

@kindaclassy

You lost me at ready made pastry-not good.

Me too to be honest. I’d love to see them get 30 kids making pastry and an apple pie in an hour. DS (10) made bread this weekend, he’d barely kneaded the bread in that time and it was only him.

Angel delight cheesecake was something that I had to make at secondary school lol. And this was like 28 years ago!

@shallIswim

Other memories of school cookery (a comp in the late 70s, early 80s) - revolting Eggs au Gratin and being taught to WASH UP.

And wash and iron shirts.

I did food tech GCSE about 13 years ago and we made:
Cheese scones
A cheese sauce (which we then expanded to make macaroni cheese / pasta bakes with)
Focaccia,
Pizzas,
Profiteroles,
No bake cheesecake,
Beef burgers,
Veggie burgers,
Spaghetti Bolognese,
Sausage rolls,
Soup,
Chicken pie,
Different ways of making eggs,
Brownies,
Chicken fajitas.

Probably lots more that I can’t remember! Most was from scratch, and usually one week did the basic version of a recipe (eg sausage rolls) and then the following week we expanded and changed the flavours to whatever we individually chose (pork and apple sausage rolls, cheese and onion rolls etc)
I do remember my mum always complaining about the cost though and dashing around Tesco’s the night before looking for obscure expensive ingredients that I only needed a pinch of etc.