Just Like the Original: Nostalgic Vegan Jaffa Cakes
Jaffa cakes are popular in the UK, made from a light sponge coated with orange jelly and dark chocolate. They are officially classified as ‘cake’, though some people eat them like biscuits!
Conventional jaffa cakes are made with eggs and palm oil, and sold in plastic packaging. So if you are nostalgic for these tasty little treats, why not have a go at making your own?
These are not only more nutritious but tastier due to real orange juice and zest (not from concentrate) and you can use mini-muffin pans to bake perfectly round sponges, before cooling all the layers before assembling.
Keep jaffa cakes away from pets, due to citrus and chocolate.
All jaffa cake recipes start with a simple sponge, and since you can’t find good vegan sponge in shops, you’ll have to make your own. But that’s good, as then you’ll know how, and can use the base recipes to make all kinds of goodies!
The orange jelly base uses agar-agar (a seaweed-based setting agent), though if you want you could cheat and use ready-made orange vegan jelly.
This is a dessert so it uses sugar, but there are plenty of better sugars on the market (like coconut sugar) than the white refined poisoned stuff! Then simply cover your little sponges in melted dark chocolate mixed with oil and plant milk. Job done!
Giant vegan jaffa cake! School Night Vegan
The history of jaffa cakes
In 1991, jaffa cakes found themselves in an unexpected legal battle, as chocolate-covered biscuits are classed as a ‘luxury item’ so subject to VAT (value added tax), where cake is classed as a staple food, so exempt. Customs and Excise argued that jaffa cakes were biscuits due to their size and marketing, but McVitie’s went to court and successfully defended them as cakes.
How? Because when biscuits go stale, they absorb moisture and go soft. But when cakes go stale, they lose moisture and go hard. And because jaff cakes go hard when stale, the court had to legally classify them as cakes. So that’s why they don’t have VAT added.
Made in a factory in Manchester, the company produces 2000 jaffa cakes each minute, with over 1 billion eaten each year. Yet despite the name, they don’t contain fresh orange, the mass-produced recipe is a blend of apricot paste and tangerine oil.
Ingredients and packaging of Jaffa Cakes
Commercial jaffa cakes are certainly not vegan, as they contain whole egg and dried whole egg (not free-range). They are sweetened with glucose-fructose syrup (this is not from sugar beet from usually from wheat or maize, and is classed as a ‘free sugar’, meaning it gives lots of calories with zero nutritional benefits. And consuming too much can lead to massive spikes in blood sugar.
Other ingredients include normal sugar, flour, dark chocolate (made with milk and palm oil) and a little concentrated orange juice.
Jaffa cakes are packaged in plastic wrap (which can be recycled at kerbside or supermarket bag bins) and a blue cardboard box.
