JAFFA CAKES - A.K.A. BILIOUS BOGUS BISCUIT REVERSE RUSSIAN ROULETTE
People (specifically, idiots) often argue about whether a Jaffa cake is in fact a cake or a biscuit. This, despite the fact it has the word 'cake' in the title and goes stale like a cake not soft like a biscuit when you inadvertently leave the packet open a bit and ruin the next day's tea break. Both fairly substantial clues - particularly the former, given the manufacturer is literally telling you it's a cake on the packet. I mean, what more do you want - a confession written in blood from Mr Kipling?
Sure, you may eat them in the same manner as you eat biscuits, but then you'd probably eat a Victoria sponge-sized biscuit by the chunk like a cake - it's more about size than anything inherently biscuitesque as to why there's even any discussion in the first place. Observe: a giant bourbon is still a bourbon - it doesn't metamorphose into a black forest gateaux once it passes a certain girth.
To put it another way, even if you sellotape wheels to a pony, paint stripes down its sides and make it eat a carburetor, it still isn't a sports car. What it probably is is dead, actually - but it's still a dead pony rather than anything else.
Talking of ingesting terrible things leading to potential harm though, a more interesting question I find is 'Why has Jaffa (whatever the hell that substance is) got the monopoly on being in tiny cakes that are frequently and inexplicably mislabelled as biscuits? What else could you put in a Jaffa cake?'. This, as regular readers will know, being the wafer-thin preamble to me making a perfectly good thing worse. Much worse, in some cases...
If you must, cajole the following from your local shopkeeper in exchange for monies:
6 plain fairy cakes (110 g each of flour, sugar & butter, 2 eggs, a slug of milk and a splash of vanilla extract will make 12 - don't say I never feature genuine recipes on this blog!)
6 more cupcake/muffin cases other than the ones you used to make the fairy cakes, unless you're some sort of epic tightwad and you wipe them down and re-use them in which case (a) the same ones and (b) get a life
A large bar of plain chocolate
A carrot
A cucumber
A jar of Branston pickle
Some cheddar cheese
Some raspberry jam
Some jalapeno peppers
A cup of tea
Quite a lot of Rennies
Another cup of tea
Bar making the fairy cakes, this is not so much cooking as assembly this week. A bit like Lego really, only with a lot more retching.
Once the fairy cakes are cool, remove them from their cases and decapitate them - the bit we want is the top rounded bit, which we'll flip over to make our authentic (well, roughly the right shape at least) Jaffa cake base. You can dispose of the 'stems' in any conveniently located chef's mouth.
Then, dollop and/or disperse the fillings, one per cake base as in the photo. Obviously you want a slice of cucumber and a slice of carrot rather than the whole thing - we're not aiming for something that looks like a chocolate-covered novelty you'd see someone wielding while extraordinarily drunk on a particularly dubious hen night. Apart from anything else, it'd be a right pain in the arse to balance such a monolith in a cupcake case.
Bung the topped bases in the fridge to cool down for a bit while you melt the chocolate. You could do this in a water bath, making sure to temper the chocolate carefully so the cocoa fat doesn't separate out, but let's face it - you're going to be pouring it over some Branston pickle in a minute, so who gives a shit. So 30 seconds in a bowl in the microwave, stir, and repeat until runny.
Pop the nude cakes and fillings into the 6 spare cupcake cases - this is to stop the molten chocolate going absolutely everywhere. Then, splodge out roughly a tablespoon of chocolate onto each base so that the top is covered. Then it's back in the fridge for 20 mins or so to set, and you're ready to go! Or, if you have any sense, you'll have gone already so someone else has the questionable task of eating them.
Once set, I had no way of knowing which filling was which - hence the Russian Roulette part, albeit in reverse as only 1 filling (the jam one) was likely to be anything even remotely pleasant. And much to my dismay, I was completely right. So here, in order of how I picked them, are the results.
Branston pickle cake
Hooray for me, picking a real treat to start with! On the plus side, even in cross-section this looked so good it could have passed for a genuine Jaffa cake - albeit a fairly rustic one that had fallen down a considerable hill face first. On the minus side was the fact that everything else about it was on the minus side. Branston pickle has a fairly strong smell even when used in a cheese sarnie, yet it turns out nothing brings that vinegary stench out more than coupling it with a delicate vanilla cake and dark chocolate. But the taste is what really got my mouth watering - unfortunately, watering in that way that happens as a prelude to vomiting. Sweet and savoury can go together of course, and can even be very popular (see, for example, literally everything related to caramel ever now having frigging salt in it whether you like it or not). This was just wronged up though, like having the results of serious medical tests relayed to you by an automated message on WhatsApp recorded by the Chuckle Brothers. Though it didn't taste exactly like it, the closest flavour sensation I can suggest that you might know is if you've ever tasted cola with salt in. Yes, that bad.
I wasn't sick, by the way. But I did have to have a little walk round the kitchen a few times.
Carrot cake
Obviously carrot cake is a real thing, so for this I had high hopes. Well, non-subterranean hopes anyway. Here though it wasn't the taste but the texture. Raw carrot can take an age to masticate into something you can swallow that doesn't resemble orange tree bark at the best of times, and being forced into a recipe where he didn't belong turned out to not be the best of times for poor Mr Carrot at all. The need to keep chewing it for far longer than everything else just didn't work at all with the other components - it felt like I'd eaten some sort of chocolate snack bar but left the wrapper on, and inexplicably decided to persevere rather than spit it out. And also: the wrapper was made out of some sort of tasteless organic sacking material.
Not nausea-inducing, but it's not going to be challenging genuine carrot cake any time soon. Heck, it's not even going to be challenging Pontefract cake any time soon, and that's fucking awful.
Cucumber cake
If you've ever seen the harrowing footage that is a US hot dog speed eating competition, you may know that a popular yet minging strategy among contestants is to soak the buns in a glass of water so they go down more easily. Thus, following this theory, the cucumber having made the cake as soggy as a cocktail umbrella in a nightclub urinal at 3am should have helped this slip down a treat. Sadly, it turns out the taste of one of the more dismal salad vegetables accompanied by damp chocolate-coated cake negates any lubrication benefits on account of being bloody awful. Imagine Pimms with a shot of Baileys in it, and now imagine that someone has removed all the alcohol (which is the sole reason for drinking Pimms anyway) and replaced it with cardboard. Mmm.
Jalapeno cake
At last, a glimmer of hope. Dark chocolate and chilli of course go brilliantly together, like gin and another, much larger, gin. But here I was undone by my own laziness. You see, rather than buying a chilli and chopping it myself I just used some bits of pre-cut chilli we had in a jar in the fridge. And what I'd forgotten was that these bits were in spirit vinegar. Lovely, briney vinegar. This was therefore much more similar to the Branston experience than I was expecting, but now I also had the taste of disappointment to contend with as well. One to put on the 'refine and try again' pile, which is a particular shame as there's no such pile.
Jam cake
Finally, some respite. No surprises here - raspberry jam works very well in Jaffa cakes, end of. So point made that you don't have to have Jaffa in your biscuit-sized cakes for them to work, albeit via 5 of the stupidest, most unpleasant cul-de-sacs imaginable. And if there's one thing we all hate, it's an unpleasant sac, cul-de- or otherwise.
What was worse though was that even though I'd finally found the edible needle in the haystack made of mouldy dog dirt, I still didn't really enjoy it as I was already feeling fairly queasy on account of the previous 4 efforts. Still, 5 down and 1 to go...
Cheese cake
Here's a thing: strong cheddar and stodgy fruit cake go quite well together. No, really - I didn't believe it either, but many years ago a friend of mine convinced me to try it and I was genuinely amazed at how nice it was. Sadly, this isn't quite the same, but it's got leanings the same way - the really strong cheese and the really strong chocolate somehow seem to cancel each other out a lot taste-wise, and what you're left with is remarkably mild...
...until about 10 minutes later, when you start doing cocoa-laced cheddary belches. At this point, please do crack open a packet of your favourite indigestion pills. I know I did.
I think it's safe to say that if you plan to make your own off-menu Jaffa cakes, there are some simple golden rules to remember:
1. not too wet
2. not too vinegary
3. must be able to swallow within 30 seconds
Obviously I should probably make a godawful sexual innuendo joke here, but I've eaten a considerable amount of acrid, caffeine-laden dark chocolate today so any minute now at best I might be sick at high speed and at worst I might have a heart attack while accidentally pickling myself from the inside out. Hence I'll leave you to come up with your own suitably lewd punchline - I'm off for another rennie. Which in hindsight, I should probably have put in one of the Jaffas - heck, it even passes all 3 of the golden rules!
Next week: Christ on a bike, it's our EASTER SPECIAL! Featuring SUPERHOT CROSS BUNS and (oh bloody sodding hell, why did I agree to try and make this one) SCOTCH CREME EGGS
Sure, you may eat them in the same manner as you eat biscuits, but then you'd probably eat a Victoria sponge-sized biscuit by the chunk like a cake - it's more about size than anything inherently biscuitesque as to why there's even any discussion in the first place. Observe: a giant bourbon is still a bourbon - it doesn't metamorphose into a black forest gateaux once it passes a certain girth.
To put it another way, even if you sellotape wheels to a pony, paint stripes down its sides and make it eat a carburetor, it still isn't a sports car. What it probably is is dead, actually - but it's still a dead pony rather than anything else.
Talking of ingesting terrible things leading to potential harm though, a more interesting question I find is 'Why has Jaffa (whatever the hell that substance is) got the monopoly on being in tiny cakes that are frequently and inexplicably mislabelled as biscuits? What else could you put in a Jaffa cake?'. This, as regular readers will know, being the wafer-thin preamble to me making a perfectly good thing worse. Much worse, in some cases...
 |
| Spot the odd one out... |
Ingredients:
If you must, cajole the following from your local shopkeeper in exchange for monies:
6 plain fairy cakes (110 g each of flour, sugar & butter, 2 eggs, a slug of milk and a splash of vanilla extract will make 12 - don't say I never feature genuine recipes on this blog!)
6 more cupcake/muffin cases other than the ones you used to make the fairy cakes, unless you're some sort of epic tightwad and you wipe them down and re-use them in which case (a) the same ones and (b) get a life
A large bar of plain chocolate
A carrot
A cucumber
A jar of Branston pickle
Some cheddar cheese
Some raspberry jam
Some jalapeno peppers
A cup of tea
Quite a lot of Rennies
Another cup of tea
Method:
Bar making the fairy cakes, this is not so much cooking as assembly this week. A bit like Lego really, only with a lot more retching.
Once the fairy cakes are cool, remove them from their cases and decapitate them - the bit we want is the top rounded bit, which we'll flip over to make our authentic (well, roughly the right shape at least) Jaffa cake base. You can dispose of the 'stems' in any conveniently located chef's mouth.
 |
| It's all looking remarkably arty so far. |
Then, dollop and/or disperse the fillings, one per cake base as in the photo. Obviously you want a slice of cucumber and a slice of carrot rather than the whole thing - we're not aiming for something that looks like a chocolate-covered novelty you'd see someone wielding while extraordinarily drunk on a particularly dubious hen night. Apart from anything else, it'd be a right pain in the arse to balance such a monolith in a cupcake case.
 |
| Terrible canapé, Sir? Madam? Sir? |
Bung the topped bases in the fridge to cool down for a bit while you melt the chocolate. You could do this in a water bath, making sure to temper the chocolate carefully so the cocoa fat doesn't separate out, but let's face it - you're going to be pouring it over some Branston pickle in a minute, so who gives a shit. So 30 seconds in a bowl in the microwave, stir, and repeat until runny.
Pop the nude cakes and fillings into the 6 spare cupcake cases - this is to stop the molten chocolate going absolutely everywhere. Then, splodge out roughly a tablespoon of chocolate onto each base so that the top is covered. Then it's back in the fridge for 20 mins or so to set, and you're ready to go! Or, if you have any sense, you'll have gone already so someone else has the questionable task of eating them.
 |
| Turns out adding the element of surprise to food is only a positive thing when it's a *nice* surprise. Who knew? |
The results:
Once set, I had no way of knowing which filling was which - hence the Russian Roulette part, albeit in reverse as only 1 filling (the jam one) was likely to be anything even remotely pleasant. And much to my dismay, I was completely right. So here, in order of how I picked them, are the results.
Branston pickle cake
 |
| '...And that smashing, vinegary brown bit!', as the adverts never used to say. |
Hooray for me, picking a real treat to start with! On the plus side, even in cross-section this looked so good it could have passed for a genuine Jaffa cake - albeit a fairly rustic one that had fallen down a considerable hill face first. On the minus side was the fact that everything else about it was on the minus side. Branston pickle has a fairly strong smell even when used in a cheese sarnie, yet it turns out nothing brings that vinegary stench out more than coupling it with a delicate vanilla cake and dark chocolate. But the taste is what really got my mouth watering - unfortunately, watering in that way that happens as a prelude to vomiting. Sweet and savoury can go together of course, and can even be very popular (see, for example, literally everything related to caramel ever now having frigging salt in it whether you like it or not). This was just wronged up though, like having the results of serious medical tests relayed to you by an automated message on WhatsApp recorded by the Chuckle Brothers. Though it didn't taste exactly like it, the closest flavour sensation I can suggest that you might know is if you've ever tasted cola with salt in. Yes, that bad.
I wasn't sick, by the way. But I did have to have a little walk round the kitchen a few times.
Carrot cake
Obviously carrot cake is a real thing, so for this I had high hopes. Well, non-subterranean hopes anyway. Here though it wasn't the taste but the texture. Raw carrot can take an age to masticate into something you can swallow that doesn't resemble orange tree bark at the best of times, and being forced into a recipe where he didn't belong turned out to not be the best of times for poor Mr Carrot at all. The need to keep chewing it for far longer than everything else just didn't work at all with the other components - it felt like I'd eaten some sort of chocolate snack bar but left the wrapper on, and inexplicably decided to persevere rather than spit it out. And also: the wrapper was made out of some sort of tasteless organic sacking material.
Not nausea-inducing, but it's not going to be challenging genuine carrot cake any time soon. Heck, it's not even going to be challenging Pontefract cake any time soon, and that's fucking awful.
 |
| Chewier than a fruit pastille. But regrettably only as tasty as a fruit bastille. Oh shut up groaning, you find something that rhymes with 'pastille' that still sort-of makes sense. |
Cucumber cake
If you've ever seen the harrowing footage that is a US hot dog speed eating competition, you may know that a popular yet minging strategy among contestants is to soak the buns in a glass of water so they go down more easily. Thus, following this theory, the cucumber having made the cake as soggy as a cocktail umbrella in a nightclub urinal at 3am should have helped this slip down a treat. Sadly, it turns out the taste of one of the more dismal salad vegetables accompanied by damp chocolate-coated cake negates any lubrication benefits on account of being bloody awful. Imagine Pimms with a shot of Baileys in it, and now imagine that someone has removed all the alcohol (which is the sole reason for drinking Pimms anyway) and replaced it with cardboard. Mmm.
 |
| This was absolutely every bit as rubbish as it looks. |
Jalapeno cake
At last, a glimmer of hope. Dark chocolate and chilli of course go brilliantly together, like gin and another, much larger, gin. But here I was undone by my own laziness. You see, rather than buying a chilli and chopping it myself I just used some bits of pre-cut chilli we had in a jar in the fridge. And what I'd forgotten was that these bits were in spirit vinegar. Lovely, briney vinegar. This was therefore much more similar to the Branston experience than I was expecting, but now I also had the taste of disappointment to contend with as well. One to put on the 'refine and try again' pile, which is a particular shame as there's no such pile.
Jam cake
Finally, some respite. No surprises here - raspberry jam works very well in Jaffa cakes, end of. So point made that you don't have to have Jaffa in your biscuit-sized cakes for them to work, albeit via 5 of the stupidest, most unpleasant cul-de-sacs imaginable. And if there's one thing we all hate, it's an unpleasant sac, cul-de- or otherwise.
What was worse though was that even though I'd finally found the edible needle in the haystack made of mouldy dog dirt, I still didn't really enjoy it as I was already feeling fairly queasy on account of the previous 4 efforts. Still, 5 down and 1 to go...
Cheese cake
Here's a thing: strong cheddar and stodgy fruit cake go quite well together. No, really - I didn't believe it either, but many years ago a friend of mine convinced me to try it and I was genuinely amazed at how nice it was. Sadly, this isn't quite the same, but it's got leanings the same way - the really strong cheese and the really strong chocolate somehow seem to cancel each other out a lot taste-wise, and what you're left with is remarkably mild...
 |
| I'd forgotten to take pics of the last 2 due to excessive digestive gurgling. |
...until about 10 minutes later, when you start doing cocoa-laced cheddary belches. At this point, please do crack open a packet of your favourite indigestion pills. I know I did.
The verdict:
I think it's safe to say that if you plan to make your own off-menu Jaffa cakes, there are some simple golden rules to remember:
1. not too wet
2. not too vinegary
3. must be able to swallow within 30 seconds
Obviously I should probably make a godawful sexual innuendo joke here, but I've eaten a considerable amount of acrid, caffeine-laden dark chocolate today so any minute now at best I might be sick at high speed and at worst I might have a heart attack while accidentally pickling myself from the inside out. Hence I'll leave you to come up with your own suitably lewd punchline - I'm off for another rennie. Which in hindsight, I should probably have put in one of the Jaffas - heck, it even passes all 3 of the golden rules!
Next week: Christ on a bike, it's our EASTER SPECIAL! Featuring SUPERHOT CROSS BUNS and (oh bloody sodding hell, why did I agree to try and make this one) SCOTCH CREME EGGS
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