School Dinners Vegan Jam sponge

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Jam coconut sponge is an old British school dinners classic! It’s an easy, quick and delicious bake using everyday store cupboard ingredients.

It’s become a staple bake in our house and can be topped with a variety of toppings. The most popular for school dinners were jam and coconut, or icing and sprinkles, or a chocolate frosting.

How to make a yummy vegan jam sponge tray bake:

To prepare a vegan, plant-based ingredient based school dinners jam sponge alternative, I use the victoria sponge recipe I originally reviewed on here on my post: Rose Elliot’s Eggless Sponge Cake

The Rose Elliot’s sponge cake is really easy to bake and uses everyday store cupboard ingredients.

Instead of using 2, 7 inch circle pans, I use a 10/11 inch x 7 inch rectangular pan and poured all the cake mix into this. Bake as per the original recipe.

When cool whip up some jam with a tablespoon, to make it smoother, and spread over the cake. Sprinkle with dessicated coconut.

Or prepare some simple white icing with icing sugar and water. Just add a few drops of water to about 6 tbsps of icing sugar and mix till smooth. Add more water a tiny bit at a time until you get a nice, thick spreading consistency. Just add more icing sugar if your icing becomes too thin. Drizzle and spread over your cake. Throw on some sprinkles and your done.

For a lemon traybake, you could add some lemon zest and/or a tsp of lemon essence to the sponge mix instead of the vanilla. Use lemon juice to prepare the icing in-place of the water. Decorate with sprinkles or some more lemon zest.

You could add various toppings to the one cake for an unusual and fun decoration!

When toppings are set cut into squares or little rectangles. The portion sizes are your choice!

Serving suggestion

School dinners jam sponge is traditionally served with pink custard! Usually pink custard would be made with a packet of strawberry or raspberry blancmange mix. But I haven’t been able to source one that is dairy-milk free.

My first attempt at pink custard didn’t go so well. I prepared some normal custard and added a few drops of red food colouring. I discovered too late that the dye was not to be heated!

So I think the dye must have reacted badly to simmering in the custard!

The second time I used a few squirts of red dye paste. The colour was not exactly the same as the traditional pink custard as it’s a bit more of a mauve-peachy colour.

But it was still tasty. Just didn’t look nice for its photo!

Your custard could always just be served its normal sun-set colour. Which is what I will do next time!

Or just enjoy a slice of school dinners vegan jam sponge on its own, with your feet up and a cup of steaming coffee or tea.

Vegan Pinkish custard recipe:

Serves 3-4 people, depending on portion sizes!

2 tbsps of custard powder
2-3 tbsp of granulated sugar or any sugar,syrup or sweetener of choice
400-500 ml of plant-based milk. The amount depends on whether you prefer your custard thick or thinner. I use Alpro soya milk.
A squirt or two of red food colouring paste or gel.

Mix the custard powder and sugar together in a medium saucepan.
Add a few tbsps of milk and mix thoroughly to a smooth paste.
Over a medium heat slowly add the rest of the milk to the paste, whisking with a wooden spoon or hand whisk to avoid lumps.
Bring to the boil, stirring all the time.
When boiling turn heat to low and simmer for a few minutes. If the custard is too thick just add a little extra milk and stir. If its too thin then simmer for a bit longer to thicken up. Stir all the time to avoid burning or sticking to the pot.
Enjoy.