Home-made Jaffa Cakes

If there is anything that I would miss when I go back home, it's Jaffa Cakes. Apparently I'm not alone too; while browsing on the web, I have come across many people outside of the UK who laments the lack of availability of the incredible chocolate-topped snack cake with an orangey centre. Or if they're available, that they're not affordable. Already I get regular complaints from readers who came to the UK for studies and have since gone back to their respective hometowns about not being able to get their Jaffa Cake fix, and that efforts to try to get their local distributor for McVities products to import the snack have proven in vain.

The next best thing then, is to make the cakes from scratch. A quick Google search reveals that the Jaffa cake is nothing more than a low-fat sponge topped with some gelatinous substance before the entire top is coated with chocolate. The difficult bit is trying to find the low-fat sponge recipe, which wasn't too difficult; that information came along with the jaffa cake recipe search. Which leaves us with the fun stuff - the chocolate coating and the jelly-like centre.

Some recipes I've come across call for proper jelly to be in the centre, but others have commented that marmalade would suffice. I gambled and just used Sainsbury's Basics Orange Marmalade, and found it to suffice. Since it's medium cut, there would be a fair bit of rind and other bits suspended in the spread, which might annoy some. Personally, I think it provides for some interesting texture.

So start by making the low-fat sponge. Beat one egg together with 50g of caster sugar until fluffy. Add 50g of plain flour and keep beating until a smooth batter is obtained.

Grease a muffin tin, and add the batter to the tin holes. It should be good enough for six cakes, so scale the recipe as desired.

Bake at 180 degrees Centigrade for about 8-10 minutes.

Melt some Sainsbury's Basics chocolate either in a double boiler or a microwave set on high for two minutes. I went with milk chocolate as I felt that some contrast was needed against the slightly bitter and sour Basics marmalade.

Put a small teaspoon of  marmalade in the centre of each cake, before applying a coat of chocolate over the top. Adjust thickness of coating to taste.

Leave to cool before transferring to fridge to let the chocolate set.

I overdid the coating, such that it overpowered the marmalade and made the cake stodgy overall. Had that gone well though, the cakes would have made for a really great light snack. It's also good to know that the joy of eating Jaffa Cakes is also no longer restricted to places which sell them, since the recipe is pretty easy to reproduce at home.

Description	Price per Unit	No. of servings	Trade-up Premium	Trade-up Benefits
Medium-cut Marmalade	£0.30	454	+£0.61	Choice of cut, higher fruit content

Jaffa Cakes

Jaffa Cakes are a quintessentially British snack. They basically consist of a dry sponge cake base with orange jelly on the base at the centre (Jaffa is a type of orange, hence the name) and a chocolate shell to top it off. They are highly addictive - I am obliged to bring back a large number of these cakes for my family; my record is 4 boxes totalling 96 cakes. McVitie's - the company who first introduced them - even has a Jaffaholics Anonymous number set up, supposedly to deal with people who simply can't stop eating them.

Sad to say, the Sainsbury's Basics ones are a major disappointment. Compared to the original McVitie's Jaffa Cakes, the cake base is drier, and lose their moisture more quickly than the original when in the fridge. The orange jelly tastes sharper and a little more sour, and the chocolate coating can be quite thin.

Eating four of these things in one go actually gave me a slight burning in my stomach, something which I don't usually experience with the McVitie's ones.

Do yourselves a favour and get the original Jaffa Cakes from McVities'. Skip the house brands altogether.

Description	Price per Unit	No. of servings	Trade-up Premium	Trade-up Benefits
Jaffa Cakes	£0.50	24 cakes	+£0.50	More moist cake, thicker chocolate top, sweeter orange filling. Recommended.