By Keighley’s Mike Armstrong, an award-winning master baker with a big passion for baking...

WHO remembers cornflake tart?

If you do, it will have you skipping down memory lane in no time.

Cornflake tart was a standard primary school dinner favourite from the 1970s.

It provided a dose of sugar, which fuelled plenty of breakdancing in the school yard, but might not have been the healthiest of desserts. However for nostalgia's sake, let's recreate it, without the pink custard!

I do have fond memories of school dinners, but don't get me wrong, from a nutritional standpoint they're definitely better today. However back then we were still eating good balanced meals at school – a little boring in my view, but there were plenty of empty plates.

Like many regulars, cornflake tart was simple and contained cost-friendly ingredients. If you spent time queuing up with tray in hand trying to see what was on offer from the dinner ladies, then you'll know that you could smell it was a cornflake tart day as soon as you walked into the hall.

It has a thin shortcrust pastry base topped with a layer of strawberry or raspberry jam, then on top of your jam is a thick layer of crunchy cornflakes smothered in golden syrup. The joy of this pudding, seeing one of your favourite cereals made into a cake, can't be a bad thing.

Let's look at the hero of this recipe, the humble cornflake, which has been on our breakfast table since 1894 when a certain Mr Will Kellogg created the cereal by accident. John his brother left out a batch of dough one night at the sanatorium where they worked, and rather than throwing it out when he realised the next day, he rolled it thinly and it formed flakes which could then be baked. Will went about trying to recreate what had happened, and thus, cornflakes were born.

The breakfast cereal proved so popular that the Kellogg company was created to help spread this crunchy breakfast treat to the rest of the world.

Jump forward to the present, and over 70 million boxes of cornflakes are produced in the UK each year.

Like many other simple dessert recipes, the cornflake tart itself first appeared in a post-war recipe guide published in the late 1940s.

Combining these facts makes us wonder if the cornflake tart began life in the north of England, as this has been the home of the Kellogg factory since 1938.

RECIPE

CORNFLAKE TART

Serves 8 portions

Ingredients:

454g/1lb sweet shortcrust pastry

135g/5oz golden syrup

65g/2oz unsalted butter

30g/1oz dark or light brown sugar

Pinch of salt

100g/3 1/2oz cornflakes

100g/3 1/2 oz strawberry or raspberry jam

Method:

1. Roll out your pastry to drape over a 20cm/8ins flan tin, then press gently to form the shape. Don’t trim off the excess pastry completely yet.

2. Place the pastry-lined tin in the fridge to chill for 15 minutes before blind baking using parchment paper and pulses like baking beans, rice or pasta.

3. Preheat the oven to 180C/160C fan/Gas Mark 4 and bake your tart for 15-20 minutes, if need be, take out the baking pulses and return to bake a little longer for a golden brown base. Once baked trim off the edges quickly with a sharp knife, then set aside to cool fully in the tin.

4. For the filling: Just melt the butter, syrup, sugar and salt in a large saucepan, and once completely melted, stir in the cornflakes and gently mix with a wooden spoon till every flake is coated well.

5. Spread the jam over the pastry base evenly and top with the syrupy cornflake mixture, and gently spread out evenly.

6. Put the tart back into the oven for another 8-10 minutes, then place onto a cooling wire to harden and set the cornflakes before serving, with a lashings of custard?