Monday, September 26, 2022

JAFFA CAKES .........


I try and keep my blogs interesting for ya!!!!!!....why .....well ........i could tell you it's....... because i care ........but you don't give a fuck......... as much as i do ...so bollocks !!!!!.....anyways  .......jaffa  cakes  its a British thing......... mostly ......America would not  understand   .......it's  britsh  .....cup of tea and a jaffa .......or the whole fucking box ...with a couple cups ........well here is a list of the best  ......i personally am a whore for  mac vities  i was raised on these  fuckers  the are the rolls  royce of  jaffa  cakes  .......It's almost like a dessert in a box ......if you are a non brit  you will not  get this  deal .....its a british staple ....jaffa cakes are like  well you have to eat them to understand ......and be a  brit  i ......i think jamaicans  like them too .........

It's hard to compare  anything to  mac vities ........ they are the  standard to live by .......like a bentley........the others are  just like bog standard  vehicles .........

I taste-tested Jaffa Cakes to find the best value – the results might surprise you

As the Telegraph's thrifty buys expert, I seek out the best value staples to make you a savvier shopper. This week, Jaffa Cakes

On the surface, there’s nothing too controversial about a Jaffa Cake, says Xanthe Clay
On the surface, there’s nothing too controversial about a Jaffa Cake, says Xanthe Clay CREDIT: Heathcliff O'Malley

A disc of sponge, a blob of orange jelly, a coating of dark chocolate. There’s nothing too controversial about a Jaffa Cake, surely. Yet in true British style, we’ve found plenty to argue about, because nothing about our teatime treats and coffee-break biccies is to be taken lightly

First there was Jaffa Cakes v The Taxman. Chocolate-covered biscuits are deemed to be a luxury, so subject to VAT, while cakes are classified as a staple, so are tax-free. HM Customs and Excise maintained that Jaffa Cakes were in fact a biscuit, being packaged like a biscuit and sold alongside biscuits. Bizarrely, the third plank of their argument was that Jaffa Cakes are designed to be eaten with your fingers while “a cake may be more often expected to be eaten with a fork”, which suggests Hyacinth Bucket has a job with the customs authority.

McVitie’s, never one to miss the opportunity for some publicity, baked a foot-wide Jaffa Cake to show off its sponginess to the court – the ultimate sweetener for the officials who, one hopes, got a slice with their tea. But what swung it in the end was when it was pointed out that Jaffa Cakes go hard when they go stale (like a cake) rather than softening as biscuits do. 

And to stand by its point, the McVitie’s Jaffa Cake website avoids the B-word altogether, preferring to call them “rascals” and “mavericks” and other cheeky-chappie non-cake names. But on the subject of names, McVitie’s missed a trick when it first marketed the Jaffa Cake in 1927. The company christened it “Jaffa” in honour of the orangey filling, but it never trademarked “Jaffa Cake”. This means that unlike HobNob or Penguin, say, any manufacturer can use the name. All the supermarkets have their own versions, at various prices. There are, after all, plenty of riffs to be made on that sponge-jelly-chocolate combination. Thinner, thicker, more or less orange-y, large, small or even oblong: what matters is the balance of flavours and textures.

Jaffa Cakes are among the nation's favourite sweet snacks
Jaffa Cakes are among the nation's favourite sweet snacks CREDIT: Getty

On Twitter there’s been jousting over Jaffas since I posted a photograph of the samples I was trying (you can find it at @XantheClay). For one thing, do non-orange ones even count? After all, McVitie’s has made pineapple, lemon-and-lime, passion fruit, cherry and blackcurrant flavours.

There are several Polish Jaffa Cake-style confections available too, notably the Delicje brand, which come in strawberry, raspberry and blueberry, and which are apparently excellent. But the stickler in me wants to discount these all – after all, the name is Jaffa.

However, it turns out that the original Jaffa Cake was completely devoid of orange, made with apricot jam and tangerine oil (marketing laws being looser then) so it wouldn’t do to be too purist.

Recently, Jaffa Cake riffs have been taken to new highs – or lows, depending on your point of view – by Krispy Kreme, makers of the American-style sugary “donuts”. They’ve been selling a Jaffanut, a spongey doughnut stuffed with “orange-flavoured filling” and covered in “dark chocolatey icing”. I doubt that they’ll be arguing the toss with the taxman about that one.

Back with the regular Jaffa Cake, which is, frankly, a lavish enough combination that it seems a bit Marie Antoinette to insist cakes are staples. Why does calling them biscuits transform them into a luxury? The 17th-century sailors who subsisted on ship’s biscuits on long voyages might have taken issue with that: Samuel Pepys, in his day job as a naval administrator, set daily rations at a pound per man, although they weren’t chocolate covered, but “good, clean, sweet, sound, well-bolted with a horse-cloth, well-baked, and well-conditioned wheaten biscuit”.

The controversy doesn’t end there. It turns out that the chocolate layer is on the bottom of the cake, not the top, as the sponges are dipped flat-side-down in a vat of chocolate; the chocolate is on the bottom, according to McVitie’s. But eating them that way up makes the sponge stick to the roof of your mouth, so it’s clearly nonsense. It does, however, raise more important questions, like why doesn’t the little disc of jelly fall off into the lake of molten chocolate?

Major philosophical debates aside, we love our Jaffa Cakes. The Annual Biscuit Review compiled by Pladis, owner of McVitie’s, put their Jaffa Cakes as the nation’s third best-selling biscuit brand after McVitie’s Chocolate Digestives and Nestle’s KitKat. Yes, that’s right, biscuit brand. So now they are saying it is a biscuit? Nobody tell Customs.

Which are the best value Jaffa Cakes?

jaffa

Sainsbury’s

84p for 282g (24 cakes; 30p per 100g)

Identical to the Tesco ones, which I also tried: my bet is these are made in the same factory. Not neat-looking, with uneven chocolate. The sponge is pockmarked and tough, and the chocolate isn’t great quality.

Aldi Belmont

89p for 300g (24 cakes; 30p per 100g)

Smaller than McVitie’s (though it’s the closest to them in flavour) and Sainsbury’s; slapdash look and a bit battered. Chocolate is eco-friendly but not brilliant. A lovely light texture and fat puck of jelly. 

Lidl Tower Gate

85p for 300g (24 cakes; 28p per 100g)

Very thin with jelly edge‑to‑edge rather than just in the middle. Chocolate is snappy and the sponge is tender, plus there is a fresh orange flavour. Contains the highest proportion of orange juice of all the Jaffas I tasted.

Marks & Spencer

£1.95 for 250g (22 cakes; 78p per 100g)

Flavour is definitely a cut above, with snappy, good quality chocolate and a fine-textured sponge. Will definitely impress the Hyacinth Bucket in your life.

McVitie’s

£1.70 for 244g (20 cakes; 70p per 100g)

Tidy looking, with a fat mound of jelly in the middle which gives these the proper spaceship shape. Chewy sponge, melting jelly, thin chocolate: a well-balanced mouthful.

Waitrose

£1.20 for 125g (5 cakes; 96p per 100g)

Teeny-weeny, fun-size Jaffas with an even layer of jelly over the top, but the chocolate is patchy, which at this price is not on. The sponge is light, though, and they pack a big orangey punch, although it tends to overwhelm the 

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DIDDY IS IN BARNEY

Like i say ....he is in  bernard/barney/barney rubble/trouble .......they are all going to  shit on him ,,........you know  hollywood..........