Jaffa Cakes Cakes – Must Try Super Easy Recipe

Jaffa Cakes Cakes are super quick and easy to make once you have set the jelly part. Easily adaptable to change the flavour so you don’t just have to stick with traditional orange Jaffa Cakes Cakes.

For those unfamiliar Jaffa Cakes are a cake introduced by McVitie and Price in the UK in 1927. They were named after Jaffa Oranges and were not trademarked. Jaffa Cakes can be found in the biscuit aisle! Though there’s still debates about whether they are actually cakes or biscuits!

The Jaffa Cakes Legal Battle

The Jaffa Cakes Legal Battle was in 1991 when Her Majesty’s Custom and Excise challenged the labelling them as cakes. You see cakes are zero-rated for the purposes of VAT in the UK as they are considered a staple food! This is unlike biscuits which have full VAT as they are luxury items!

Arguments for Jaffa Cakes as Biscuits

• Size
• More like biscuits than cakes
• Packaging
• Marketing
• Displayed with biscuits
• Snack
• Eaten with fingers not a fork

Why Jaffa Cakes are Cakes

Cakes harden when stale – as do Jaffa Cakes!

How to Make Jaffa Cakes Cakes

I would still argue that Jaffa Cakes are biscuits and that we are going to make here are more like traditional cakes. This will mean that you get more cake. However, if you wanted to make them more traditionally I think you are going to need to make a flatter bottom/cake bit.  

Ingredients

• 6oz self-raising flour
• 3 medium eggs
• 3oz caster sugar
• 6oz soft spread
• Tsp. baking powder.
• Tsp. vanilla extract.
• Jelly (orange if you want Orange Jaffa Cakes but other flavours will work)
• 300g Chocolate (milk, dark or orange)

Equipment

• Mixing Bowl
• Whisk
• Scales
• Spoon
• Cake cases
• Muffin tray
• Cooling rack
• Baking tray
• Cling film
• Saucepan or Microwave
• Small bowl
• Kettle
• Jug
• Fork

Method

The Jelly

1. First of all make up your jelly as per packet instructions. We do half a pint of hot water in a jug and add the broken up jelly. Mix with a fork and then add half a pint of cold water.
2. Line a baking tray with something to pour your jelly on. Cling film, foil and grease proof paper will all work. Alternatively you could put it on a plate or something – just anything that will set the jelly in a nice thin sheet.
3. Leave to set in the fridge.

Make the Cake

Making the basic fairy cakes is simple. In fact our boys have been making them since they were very young. In fact not much changes as I looked up this old post on how to make Minecraft Cakes and the same son kept asking me to make cakes even back then.

1. In a mixing bowl add the flour, eggs, caster sugar, soft spread, baking powder and vanilla extract.
2. Whisk together until all ingredients are blended together
3. Then place cake cases into a muffin tray and spoon the mixture evenly into each one – being careful not to overfill.
4. Next put in the oven until cooked. We use our fan oven at 190 degrees for around 20 minutes as a rough guide.
5. Finally place on a cooling rack to cool.

Making it a Jaffa Cakes Cakes

1. This is the part where you make your cakes into Jaffa Cakes Cakes!
2. Take your jelly out of the fridge (assuming it has set) and cut it into little circles big enough to sit in the middle of your fairy cakes. We used an egg cup! But other things that may work are cookie cutters, a glass, or if really stuck just make circles with a knife.
3. You can then use marmalade or jam to stick the circles onto each of the cakes or just place them on.
4. Melt the chocolate and allow to cool but not so much that it re-sets. This is important because if the chocolate is too hot it will make the jelly just dissolve and disappear into the cake. We have tried this with both dark and milk chocolate.
5. Pour the cooled chocolate over the jelly topped cakes.
6. Allow to cool.
7. Did you know that the chocolate is actually the bottom of the Jaffa Cake? So flip them over and enjoy!

You may also be interested in Amy Treasure’s Jaffa Cake Brownies