School cooking lessons

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School cooking price of ingredients!
Dc new to high school, cooking this week.
Cheesecake:
Butter £1.08
Biscuits £0.60
Soft cheese x3 £4.02
Strawberry £2.48
Cream £1.40
Chocolate £2.87

Other bits from kitchen- icing sugar, vanilla essence, tin etc.

Shocked at the cost tbh. Not a problem here but lots of families couldn't afford this fortnightly could they? I grew up in poverty and couldn't afford school cooking ingredients.

Strange! DD’s school asked for £30 at the start of the school year which covered shared ingredients for all pupils. For a typical class everything was provided.

The only things we had to buy were occasional optional bits and pieces that they could add in for exam practicals (eg: icing, berries, different veg etc).

I agree. That's a lot. And there's actually not a lot of cooking skills involved in cheesecake.

Our school would provide ingredients for families who received free school meals. Also, we eventually had a system where you could bring money instead towards the ingredients, which was considerably less than buying it (less than £2) as presumably it could then be bought in bulk. That only worked if there wasn't free choice over what to cook though.

The first few lessons are more focused on familiarising them with the kitchen, measuring, knife skills etc and safely using appliances. DD’s first practical lesson was making a cheese and bacon toastie with a hot chocolate.. 🤣‘Real’ cooking skills are developed over the years.

That does seem high for one lesson. I just had to pay £7 for ingredients for the whole of the year (Y7). Probably won't get a lovely cheesecake though.

Are you being asked to provide the ingredients so these are what you have costed at the shops or are they asking you to send in the money?

Either way, this to too expensive for a school cookery lesson and a cheesecake is hardly cooking - only have to melt the butter, crush up biscuits then whip together the cheese and cream before added melted chocolate and decorating with fruit) I make a very similar cheesecake ( Mary Berry white chocolate raspberry cheesecake recipe) but only on special occasions as it’s so expensive, totally delicious though.

Schools provide ingredients for FSM kids

Those are the prices I paid in the supermarket today. They take the ingredients into school themselves.
I'd much prefer to pay the school termly or something.
How do other schools manage this?

Tell me about it. DS did food for GCSE and it cost me a bloody fortune!

Are they all making individual cheesecakes for 10? That's a huge amount of food for 1 student!

3 tubs of cheese?

We don’t get asked to pay anything, just bring tubs! Not on fsm.

I wouldn’t be overly impressed at cheesecake tbh. If cost is an issue teach them to make scones or flatbreads which are cheap. £5-10 quid for the class? DS does home economics and comes home with apple pies, Victoria Sponge, savoury picnic pastries, scones, dumplings , soup so far this year.

Yes, I agree OP. I’m glad DS dropped Cookery when he left Year 9, as it worked out a small fortune over a 3 year period.

The clue is in the name. Cheese. Cake.

You don't need that volume of cheese for a cheesecake though.

Seems a lot though?

I always think cheesecake is quite pricey to make even using budget ingredients. Our school asks for £15 each term its a much better way to do it imo it removes lots of issues.

600g cream cheese,
300g biscuit, chocolate & strawberries.
150g butter
75g icing sugar (pantry).

I just followed the school list

Schools provide ingredients for fsm kids.

i used to be a secondary teacher and the cookery dept had a large storage cupboard that was full of ingredients.

I think the problem is they are making a rather large cheesecake. They need to scale it down.

When I was at school we did it this way, I thought it was the norm.

Could you buy cheaper, non branded stuff? I buy shops value brand cream cheese and it’s about 70p a tub. Same with the chocolate, all supermarkets do a really cheap 100g milk chocolate bar for about 60p.

They also need to use chocolate or strawberries, not both.

I know this isn’t the point of your post but I have always been so disappointed my DCs secondary school has never done food tech or any lessons remotely related to cooking. I think it’s one of those lessons that can really have an impact on young people and in some instances on their career choices. I login be slightly biased as it was one of my favourite lessons at school but even so - it’s a life skill and not everyone will have that opportunity at home. It’s also a lesson where some of the less academic young people can really shine.

It’s such a dry school in terms of the non core stuff (don’t get me started on school trips)

I do understand what you mean about the cost. Hopefully there is provision in place for lower income families.

I was thinking about the "3 tubs" thing - I suppose the size of the tubs you can get will vary.
I hope it at least tastes nice. I do like a bit of cheesecake 🙂

Does icing sugar normally go in cheesecake 🤔