School may still be out for Easter, but school cakes are definitely in – with no end to the trend in sight.
The humble traybake comprising a vanilla sponge with icing and sprinkles has enjoyed a resurgence, boosted by online forums and social media discussions filled with people swapping memories of it from their younger years.
According to recipe box subscription service Hello Fresh, posts for school cakes on TikTok have garnered millions of views, with searches for ’School Cake recipe’ surging by 60% during March and surpassing 100,000 weekly searches.
“The school cakes internet sensation is certainly being driven by consumers’ desire for comfort and familiarity,” comments Jacqui Passmore, marketing lead West EU & AMEAP at bakery supplier Dawn Foods.
She highlights how an emotional connection can be a very strong purchasing driver in bakery, pointing to Dawn’s Global Bakery Trends study in April 2025 that found four in five UK consumers agreeing with the statement: ‘I like sweet baked goods that remind me of my childhood’.
School cakes are also highly cost-effective as they rely on affordable, everyday ingredients. “For the school caterer and now baker, they are easy to produce at scale,” adds Passmore.
All major UK supermarkets – with the exception of Waitrose which just offers a recipe – sell school cakes. These are mainly as part of own-label ranges with some stocking branded lines such as Henllan Bakery and McGhee’s Bakery.
For Denbighshire manufacturer Henllan, school cake is its bestselling four-pack, currently shifting over 2,500 branded packs a week at retailers including Tesco, Asda, Spar, Co-op, and Booths – with popularity growing every year.
Henllan production director Tom Moore recalls how the company had been inspired to developing its school cakes after seeing everyone rediscovering their love for home baking during lockdown. “One treat kept popping up on our feeds more than any other: the vanilla school cake,” he tells British Baker. “We decided to launch our own to give people that perfect hit of nostalgia when they needed it most.”
Backed by a “mission to bake memories”, Henllan added a Chocolate School Cake and a Coconut Slice to guide even more sweet treat trips down memory lane.
McGhee’s Bakery, meanwhile, kicked off 2026 with the launch of a new Chocolate variant of its Old School Cake. The Glasgow-based supplier revealed how total production of its iced sponge cakes was up 75% year on year, driven by new listings at Tesco and Lidl.
“Old School Cake is one of those bakes that instantly takes people back,” says Russell McGhee, a fourth-generation baker at McGhee’s. “We’ve always had customers telling us they remember it from school dinners, or that it was the treat they hoped would be on the menu.”
There’s also craft bakery chains like Cooplands in the northeast, which debuted its pink-iced school cake a year ago. Product development manager Emily Anderson confirms sales have gone really well since. “It’s such a simple product but it only works if every element is done really well,” she notes. “The sponge needs to be light and moist, the icing has to be the right shade of pink and not too sticky, and it needs a perfect amount of sprinkles.”
Anderson and her NPD team are now working on creating a doughnut in a similar style with pink icing and sprinkles, which they hope will “bring the same feelings of nostalgia” to Cooplands’ line-up.
Dawn’s Passmore is predicting other bakes that remind consumers of junior school will be introduced in the coming months. Among these are Rainbow Cake featuring pink, plain, and chocolate sponge served with hot chocolate custard, and “the once-a-term treat – Cornflake Tart”. Cooplands is already ahead of the curve on the latter, with a Cornflake Tart with jam or golden syrup base already available at its shops. Just Desserts, owned by Regal Food Products Group, also rolled one out last summer.
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