McVitie's Jaffa Cakes Original Biscuits Twin Pack, 220g

The Story Behind the Cake or Biscuit Question

In 1991 a VAT tribunal had to decide whether a Jaffa Cake was a cake or a chocolate-covered biscuit, because in the United Kingdom cakes and plain biscuits are zero-rated while chocolate-covered biscuits are standard-rated. Getting it wrong is expensive in both directions, so the case was fought properly and McVitie's won it. Jaffa Cakes are legally cakes.

The argument that carried it is the useful part for anyone eating them. A cake and a biscuit stale in opposite directions: a cake starts moist and goes hard, a biscuit starts crisp and goes soft. A stale Jaffa Cake goes hard. That behaviour, not the shape, the size or the aisle it is sold in, is what settled the question, and it is also the single most practical thing to know about keeping a pack.

The current pack carries all of it.

Packaging: Follow the current UK pack and local-authority guidance; components can require different disposal routes.

What You Are Actually Buying

• Weight: two hundred and twenty grams across the box.
• Twin pack: two sleeves in one box, which is the whole format. The second sleeve is the reason to buy this over a single: one stays sealed while the first is open.
• Three layers: sponge, orange jelly, chocolate cap. Nothing is sandwiched, nothing is filled and there is no biscuit in it.
• What it is not: not a biscuit, not a dunker and not a tin item. A sealed sleeve is the only storage that works, which is the argument for the twin pack in one line.

Ideal Serving Conditions

Everything about keeping Jaffa Cakes follows from the tribunal argument. They are a cake, so they stale by drying out and going hard, and every instinct people have about storing biscuits is exactly backwards here.

A tin slows the drying; it does not reverse it, and there is no oven trick to bring a hard Jaffa Cake back.

Keeping Them Soft

• Seal the open sleeve: fold it over and clip it, or put the sleeve inside a sealed box. Air is what takes the sponge, and it starts the moment the sleeve is opened.
• One sleeve at a time: the entire argument for buying a twin pack. Leave the second sleeve sealed until the first is finished.
• Not the fridge: a fridge is dry and cold, which hardens the sponge faster and dulls the chocolate at the same time. This is the most common mistake made with them.
• Room temperature, cupboard, dark: cool but not cold, and out of direct sun, because a chocolate cap is still a chocolate cap.

The Freezer Trick, and the Two Ways to Eat Them

• Straight from the freezer: twenty minutes in the freezer turns the jelly firm and the chocolate brittle and makes the orange note read much sharper. It is the one storage move that improves them.
• Room temperature: the default, and the one that gives you the soft sponge the product is built around.
• The full moon, half moon, total eclipse: chocolate side first, then the jelly, then the sponge. It is a genuinely different eating order and it puts the orange layer in the middle of the mouthful instead of under it.
• Never dunk: hot tea goes straight through an open sponge in under a second and the jelly slides off. There is no dunking technique that works here.

Getting It Right with a Hot Drink

• Best with: a strong black tea. Orange and tannin is one of the oldest good pairings in the British kitchen, which is why Earl Grey and orange cake belong on the same tray.
• Coffee: works with a plain black coffee, less well with anything milky, because milk and sharp orange jelly are an awkward pair.
• Avoid: fruit and citrus teas. A sharp orange layer against a sharp orange infusion is one flavour twice over and both lose.
• Dunking: no, and this is not a matter of technique. An open sponge takes hot liquid instantly and the jelly detaches.
• Best moment: mid-afternoon with a pot of tea, or straight from the freezer after dinner, which is a different product altogether.