Matilda Dinner and Movie Night

The Matilda Dinner & Movie Night That Is a Love Letter to Every Kid Who Understood Her

**Fair warning before we get into it: some of the links below are affiliate links, meaning I get a tiny kickback if you buy something. Think of it as tipping your server, except the server is me and I am wearing an apron and watching a movie. You pay nothing extra and I get to keep doing this. Win win.**

There is a very specific kind of child who watched Matilda and felt seen in a way that not a lot of movies could pull off. She was too smart for her family, too strange for the neighborhood, and she found her people in books and in Miss Honey’s tiny cottage with its makeshift furniture and sad little food. I was that kid. Not because I had telekinesis or a neglectful family, but because I understood the feeling of being a little too much and not quite enough at the same time. This movie has lived in my chest since I first watched it, and getting to build a whole dinner around it for this cookbook felt less like recipe development and more like a reunion with an old friend. If you grew up feeling the same way, I have a feeling you also have a soft spot for Mrs. Doubtfire, Hook, and Harry Potter, three other dinner nights I built for exactly that same kid who needed a little magic to get through.

Every recipe from this chapter is waiting for you in Rewind & Dine 👉 [Get Rewind and Dine Here] but keep reading because this menu earned its story.

Matilda Dinner and a Movie Menu

Here is what we made:

Drinks: Trunchbull’s Tonic

Appetizers: Revolting Children Sausage Rolls and Matilda’s Pancakes

Entrée: Wormwood’s TV Dinners (two versions: Gourmet Ham & Pineapple and Gourmet Roasted Turkey)

Dessert: Bruce’s Decadent Chocolate Cake

All of it is in the cookbook. 👉 [REWIND AND DINE LINK]

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Trunchbull’s Tonic

If you have seen Matilda, you know the scene. Miss Trunchbull takes a long sip of her drink and finds a newt floating in it, courtesy of Matilda’s telekinetic justice. It is one of the most satisfying moments in the entire film and it absolutely demanded a drink named after it.

Trunchbull’s Tonic is a sparkling citrus fizz with optional vodka and elderflower liqueur. It is light, it is bright, and it looks completely innocent. Until you notice the lizard on the rim.

I washed those plastic lizards thoroughly. I want that on the record. The cookbook even acknowledges this step with a very professional note. We take food safety seriously around here.

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Revolting Children Sausage Rolls

Matilda is deeply British, which meant a British appetizer was non-negotiable. Sausage rolls felt exactly right. They have that cozy, school-day energy that belongs in the world of Crunchem Hall, and honestly they could not have been more delicious.

Ground pork breakfast sausage wrapped in flaky, golden puff pastry and sprinkled with sesame seeds. They bake up deeply golden, incredibly savory, and absolutely impossible to eat just one of. Serve them with honey mustard or Dijon and let everyone feel a little revolting about it.

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Matilda’s Pancakes

One of the quietest and most beautiful moments in Matilda is watching her make her own breakfast. She is a small child living in chaos, and she makes herself pancakes. It is such a simple act of self-sufficiency and it wrecked me as a kid and wrecks me just as much now.

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Wormwood’s TV Dinners

The Wormwood family ate their TV dinners in front of the television every night while Mr. Wormwood shouted at the screen. It is one of the defining images of the film, the family that could not be bothered to sit at a table together. I was not going to do a Matilda menu without honoring that, but I was absolutely going to make them better than anything that ever came out of a freezer.

I found the compartment trays on Amazon and made two full versions. The turkey dinner is personal. Growing up, turkey TV dinners were my favorite. There is something about that little tray of sliced turkey and mashed potatoes with a puddle of gravy that still hits. For this version, I made everything from scratch, including a stuffing recipe that I will not exaggerate about when I say it has permanently replaced my grandmother’s. Her version was just dressed-up Mrs. Cubbison’s, bless her heart. My scratch version is basically a garlic bread casserole with fresh herbs and butter and it is now my single favorite part of Thanksgiving. The cookbook has it all.

The ham version is straight from the film itself. Ham steak, pineapple ring, maraschino cherry, brown sugar glaze. It looks like 1996 served it to you on a Friday night and honestly that is a compliment.

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Bruce’s Decadent Chocolate Cake

You know the scene. The whole school watches. The Trunchbull thinks she has won. Bruce Bogtrotter picks up his fork and eats every single crumb of that enormous chocolate cake in front of everyone, and when the plate is clean the entire gymnasium erupts. It is one of the most triumphant food moments ever committed to film and it has lived in my brain since I was seven years old.

My family was always a box mix household. There is genuinely nothing wrong with that. But for this cookbook I made this cake from scratch and I will never fully recover from how good it was. Two layers of deep chocolate cake with a dark fudge frosting made from butter, cocoa powder, heavy cream, and melted dark chocolate folded in for good measure. It is rich and dramatic and looks exactly like it should look: like something worth finishing in front of an audience.

The recipe is in Rewind & Dine. The scratch version is absolutely worth it. Box mix is also welcome at this table. We are not the Trunchbull.

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The Full Spread

Getting everything on the table at once for this one felt genuinely joyful. The compartment trays, the pancake and sausage roll tower, the lizard glasses, and that cake looming on its stand in the background. It looked like a school cafeteria designed by someone who actually loved food. Which, if you think about it, is exactly the vibe.

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Tag me when you make it. Miss Honey would be proud of you.