Giant Jaffa Cake!

Jaffa Cakes. Those little morsels of joy are brimming with benefits:

• orangey
• spongy
• chocolaty
• low fat (yes only 1g of fat per disc)
• dunkable
• moreish

They even cause controversy.  Several years ago the tax man tried to make us pay VAT (sales tax) on them, saying they were chocolate covered biscuits (you have to pay that tedious money-grabbing con-man tax on such an item).

However McVities argued they were chocolate covered cakes (after all they’re called cakes aren’t they?) which don’t attract VAT.

Guess who won? Why McVities. It’s rumoured they baked a giant Jaffa Cake to prove that they were just very small cakes, rather than biscuits. In your face tax man!

As an homage to that famous cake-tax stand off I decided  to try to recreate that mythical event.

Luckily I had to hand the latest Good Food Magazine (the December 2025 issue – have you noticed how seasonal magazines publish so early they are completely irrelevant to the season you are actually in?). In here they had already given it a go. What a coincidence. Come to think of it maybe that’s where I got the idea from. What do you  reckon?

Ingredients

Most of the ingredients needed for a mega-sized jaffa cake

For the cake

• 1 block butter, softened
• 11 oz caster sugar
• 4 large eggs
• 4 oz yogurt, full-fat
• 11 oz plain flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• zest from 4 large oranges
• 2 tbsp apricot jam

For the jelly

• 18 fl oz orange juice (the recipe says from 5 large oranges but that only gave me half of what I needed)
• 4 oz caster sugar
• 6 gelatine leaves

For the genache

• 14 fl oz double cream
• 2 bars milk chocolate
• 1 bar dark chocolate
• Zest from one orange

First make the jelly. Line a spring form cake tin (that is smaller than the one you will be using for the cake) with cling film.

Remove the zest from the oranges (tedious exercise) and then juice them.

Put the juice in a small pan with the sugar and heat until it dissolves.

Put the gelatine in water to soften.

Add to the orange and stir to dissolve. Then pour the jelly into the mould. Put in the fridge to set for at least 4 hours

Meanwhile make the cake. Add all the ingredients (except the jam) to a large bowl:

Combine with an electric whisk and pour into a lined springform cake tin (about 23cm):

Bake in a low oven (160 centigrate) for about 50 mins. Remove from the oven and set aside to cool:

Lastly make the ganache. Chop up the chocolate into small bits:

Add the chocolate to a  bowl. Heat the cream until its hot to the touch. Add the cream to the chocolate and leave for 10 mins:

Now stir to mix the cream into the chocolate:

Time to put the cake together!

Slice off the top of the sponge to leave a flat surface:

Grab a glass of wine and seriously consider just drinking the chocolate:

Reconsider. Brush some melted jam onto the cake and then lay the jelly on top. Do this quickly before the jelly starts to melt.

Pour the chocolate all over the cake and then stick in the fridge to cool:

Sprinkle with orange zest and slice:

Now this particular jaffa cake had a bit of a landslip:

The jelly started to melt as soon as it got out the fridge. Add to that the warm chocolate and a big segment started sliding off the slippery jam-covered sponge. But who cares I love it when things go wrong a bit.