Bringing a twist to a nostalgic option with McGhee’s
SCOTTISH family baker McGhee’s Bakery has launched a new Chocolate Old School Cake sponge, bringing a new twist to a cult school dinner favourite.
An Old School Cake remains one of the most recognisable and iconic traybakes in the UK, featuring a soft sponge topped with thick icing and a helping of sprinkles that has been linked to school dinners and childhood treats for generations.
Helping to keep a sense of familiarity with the new one, the Chocolate Old School Cake features a chocolate sponge with chocolate icing and sprinkles on top, offering a more indulgent twist on a staple school dinner treat.
Russell McGhee, fourth-generation baker at McGhee’s, said: “Old School Cake is one of those bakes that instantly takes people back. 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.
“That connection is really important to us. We’ve been a family bakery for nearly 90 years, and a lot of what we do is about continuity, baking things people recognise and trust.
“With the chocolate version, we wanted to keep everything people love about the original, that soft sponge and thick icing, but make it feel a bit more indulgent. It’s familiar, comforting and still very much an Old School Cake.”
In recent years, the humble cake has enjoyed a resurgence with consumers across Scotland – further fuelled when celebrity baker Prue Leith shared her own School Cake recipe on The Great British Bake Off, reintroducing the traybake to a host of new consumers.
That renewed interest has been reflected in sales for the cake as well, with McGhee’s reporting that total production of its own Old School Cake is up 75% year-on-year, driven by new supermarket listings, including with Tesco in June 2025.
Barry O’Donnell, local sourcing buying manager at Tesco, said: “We’re delighted to be working with McGhee’s to launch another product in Tesco and continue to build on our strong partnership.
“Old School Cake has proved popular with customers, and the new chocolate variant adds an extra sense of indulgence.”
