Tonight sees the final final of The Great British Bake Off as we know it – and I’ll be celebrating, albeit with tears in my eyes, with a jaffa cake, which, fellow obsessives will recall, was the technical challenge posed to the bakers in the first episode of this series. Let it never be said that this column is not achingly topical. But you don’t have to be a fan of Mary, Mel and Sue* to enjoy this quintessentially British treat. Introduced by biscuitmaker McVitie and Price in 1927, and named after the famous orange, it was the subject of a legal dispute in 1991. Its fundamental identity was dissected in court, in order to prove it was indeed a chocolate-covered cake rather than a biscuit, as the Inland Revenue maintained, and thus not subject to VAT. Far be it from me to wade into such complex legal territory, but I will say that, partial as I am to the odd packet, the classic mass-manufactured jaffa cake is hard and dry enough to feel, to my mind, rather more like a biscuit. Make your own lighter, fluffier base and the taxman wouldn’t have a leg to stand on – and you can top it with as much tangy jelly and chocolate as you like. Stick it to the man … along with a nice cup of tea.
* Let’s be honest, no one’s going to admit to liking he who shall not be named.
The sponge
Despite its homely reputation, the jaffa cake is actually made from the rather fancily named genoise sponge, a featherlight confection involving eggs, minimal amounts of fat and an awful lot of elbow grease to produce the principal ingredient: air. Rather than creaming together butter and sugar, the genoise begins with eggs and sugar whisked together until pale and billowing; you then gently fold in flour and, sometimes but not always, a little melted butter, too, while striving to keep as much volume in the batter as possible.
Mary Berry, whose recipe the bakers used on television, uses no butter at all in her sponge, which makes it more robust than some of the others, but, testers feel, a little bit tough. Although, as one said: “I expect that’s you rather than Mary. Mary would never serve me a tough sponge.” Be that as it may, Bake Off veterans Ruby Tandoh and the first champion Edd Kimber’s versions are more popular, the difference between them being that Kimber uses slightly more butter in his, and Tandoh an extra egg yolk.
In fact, they’re so close that I make up a second batch of both, so they can be tested without the distraction of jelly and chocolate, and Tandoh’s version wins by a whisker thanks to its slightly softer texture. To be honest, though, we really are splitting hairs. I consider using Berry’s self-raising flour for extra volume, but it doesn’t really seem to need it. Marcus Wareing adds ground almonds to the flour, making his runty cakes too dry and dense to impress my panel of experts. The Meringue Girls, meanwhile, eschew flour altogether for a gluten-free version – based around ground almonds and a boiled orange puree – that is dense, yet anything but dry. In fact, it’s delicious – moist, bittersweet and nutty … but it’s not a jaffa cake. Disqualified. I do like the flavour combination, however, so I’ll be adding a little almond essence to the batter in place of Tandoh’s orange zest. As this is a shocking deviation from the classic recipe, feel free to leave it out if you prefer.
The jelly
To my mind, a jaffa cake stands or falls on its jelly – get it wrong, and you may as well buy a packet from the all-night garage. As if the almond outrage wasn’t enough, Wareing adds insult to injury by using marmalade in his. The disqualification klaxon sounds again.
To my slight surprise, Berry and the Meringue Girls both use shop-bought jelly, admittedly with less water than the packet suggests to concentrate the flavour – if you really must, go with Berry’s suggestion of a mere 150ml water as opposed to the 285ml recommended by the leading brand – but believe me when I say it’s hardly more work to make your own jelly from fresh juice. Come January, when blood oranges come into season, Kimber’s blood-orange version would be lovely, not only for its vivid colour, but its slightly bitter flavour, but in October, when the only thing available is pricey juice, it’s hard to beat Tandoh’s bog-standard recipe, which also includes lemon juice for extra tang.
Chuck in some zest, too, as Berry and the Meringue Girls suggest, both for texture and a hint of bitterness. A confession: although it tasted great, I had a disaster setting Tandoh’s jelly because hers is the only recipe to recommend pouring it straight on to the cooled cakes – whereupon it promptly soaked in, leaving me with a round of deliciously moist, citrussy genoise. I can’t work out where I’ve gone wrong, but it seems safer to set the jelly separately, as the other recipes do, and then place it on top in discs slightly smaller than the cakes themselves for that authentic ring of plain chocolate around the edge. (The Meringue Girls cleverly suggest setting it in another bun tin, which is easier than cutting out the circles of jelly, but unless you have a slightly smaller tin to hand, this doesn’t work sizewise.)
The chocolate
Not much to say here except take a word of advice from Berry and the Meringue Girls and allow the melted chocolate to cool before decorating the top of the cake, or it will melt the jelly – as I discover the hard way when making Kimber’s recipe. I can’t agree with Berry, however, that the chocolate layer should be as thin as in the McVities version; there’s no need to be quite so parsimonious at home, and more jelly surely demands more chocolate. Wareing tops his cakes with a piece of peel from the marmalade, but he can’t save himself at this stage. The jaffa cake is a classic for a reason – remind yourself why this weekend.
The perfect jaffa cakes
(Makes 12)
2 medium oranges
Juice of 1 lemon
1 tbsp caster sugar
2 sheets of gelatine
200g dark chocolate
For the sponge
15g butter
1 large egg, at room temperature
1 large egg yolk, at room temperature
40g caster sugar
40g plain flour
Drop of almond extract (optional)
Zest one of the oranges into a measuring jug, then squeeze one of them in there, too. Add the juice of the lemon, then enough extra juice to make the total volume up to 160ml. Put in a small pan with the sugar and heat gently, stirring occasionally to dissolve the sugar. Take off the heat.
Meanwhile, soak the gelatine leaves in cold water until soft, then wring out well and stir into the warm juice. Line a 20cm cake tin with clingfilm, then pour in the juice and chill until set.
Heat the oven to 180C and grease a 12-hole muffin tin very thoroughly. Melt the butter and set aside to cool slightly.
Whisk the egg and yolk with the sugar at high speed for 5-8 minutes until very thick, and a little dribbled on to the surface forms a solid ribbon for a few seconds before sinking. If using a food mixer for such a small amount, it’s wise to stir it all together very well first.
Sift the flour over the top (trust me, it’s worth the effort) and very gently fold in with a large metal spoon in a figure-of-eight motion, making sure you get to any pockets that might have sunk to the bottom while retaining as much air in the mixture as possible. Pour in the butter and almond extract if using, plus a pinch of salt, and fold to combine.
Divide between the muffin tin holes, making sure you don’t fill them completely, then bake for about 8 minutes until lightly golden and set. Leave to cool completely.
Cut out 4cm rounds of jelly (if you don’t have a cutter small enough, cut around a small jar lid or similar) and place in the middle of each cooled cake. Put in the fridge while you melt the chocolate.
Put the chocolate in a heatproof bowl set over but not touching a pan of simmering water and stir to melt. Allow to cool until still liquid, but just warm, then spoon over the cakes, smooth the top as best you can and leave to set slightly. Use a fork to create the criss-cross pattern on top of the jelly, but be gentle! Allow to set before eating.
The jaffa cake: as much of an institution as Bake Off, or a dry biscuit with ideas above its station? Which similar teatime favourites are better made at home ... and will anyone admit to dunking them, like Paul Hollywood?
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