It’s one of the most divisive food debates, but McVitie’s has doubled down on the fact that Jaffa Cakes are indeed a cake, and not a biscuit with its latest release.
The team behind the beloved orange chocolate sweet treat, first introduced in the UK in 1927, has now developed their take on the familiar Jaffa Cake flavours, but in biscuit form.
Jaffa Cakes, made by Stockport-based manufacturer McVitie’s, consist of a disc of orange-flavoured jelly, milk chocolate and a sponge base.
But fans of the popular British snack have passionately debated whether they’re biscuits or cakes due to their unique texture and appearance.
Additionally, they are sold in the biscuit aisle, measure only 2.125 inches in diameter and are eaten alongside (or in place of) the biscuits like Digestives and Rich Teas.
In the latest launch, available for £2.35 from Sainsbury’s, the confectionery makers swapped sponge for Digestive biscuit and added a Jaffa Cake flavoured layer.
A spokesperson for McVitie’s commented, ‘We’re well aware of the nation’s biscuit believers.
‘In fact, we’ve spent years and a considerable amount of time proving that Jaffa Cakes (clue’s in the name) are cakes.
McVities has launched Jaffa Cake flavour Digestives (pictured) – after years of passionate debate over whether the original sweet treat is a biscuit or cake
‘But we are setting the record straight once and for all, and it seems creating an actual biscuit is the only way forward. We hope cake and biscuit fans alike enjoy it, and that biscuit-believers across the UK can finally put the debate to bed.’
Among those in the biscuit camp are cookery writer Nigel Slater, who once said, ‘Jaffa Cake is a biscuit through and through’ and former Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, who said, ‘In my humble opinion a Jaffa Cake is definitely a biscuit’.
The disagreement over whether they’re biscuits or cake even reached the courts back in 1991.
McVitie’s, which has been making the orange-flavoured delicacy since 1927, was challenged for labelling their chocolate orange treats as ‘cakes’ by Her Majesty’s Customs and Excise.
But the court found in McVitie’s favour that Jaffa Cakes should be considered cakes for tax purposes – but still the debate rages on.
In 2021, a physicist even went to the lengths of using the power of artificial intelligence (AI) to solve the age-old debate.
Dr. Héloïse Stevance, an astrophysicist at the University of Auckland in New Zealand, trained algorithms with nearly 100 recipes of traditional cakes and biscuits.
She then ran two Jaffa Cakes recipes through the algorithms, which recognised them unambiguously as cakes ‘without a doubt’.
The new launch, available for £2.35 from Sainsbury’s, includes the classic Digestive biscuit with an added a Jaffa Cake flavoured layer
Dr Stevance authored a mock research paper about her investigation, which was published as a pre-print on April Fool’s Day – but she confirmed to the Daily Mail that she really did run the experiments.
The debate over whether Jaffa Cakes are cakes or biscuits is ‘one of the greatest causes of arguments amongst British families,’ Dr Stevance said.
‘Some argue that their size and host environment – the biscuit aisle – should make them a biscuit in their own right,’ she says in her paper.
‘Others consider that their physical properties – e.g. they harden rather than soften on becoming stale – suggest that they are in fact cake.’
In an attempt to finally put it to rest, Dr Stevance used two classification algorithms – random forest, which consists of multiple decision trees, and a support vector machine.
The algorithms were trained with 51 recipes of biscuits and 41 recipes of cakes, including all their different ingredients, defined as either ‘wet’, ‘fat’ and ‘dry’.
Two Jaffa Cakes recipes taken from the internet – one of which was by Mary Berry – were then fed to the algorithms.
Both algorithms predicted them to have the label ‘cake’, Dr Stevance found.
The random forest and support vector machine classifiers have a 95 per cent and 91 per cent accuracy, respectively – almost unequivocally showing that Jaffa Cakes are in fact, as their name suggests, cakes.
Dr Stevance acknowledged that her experiments did not take into account the size of Jaffa Cakes or its host environment (biscuit aisle).
But, she points out, many Mr Kipling cake products are also sold in the biscuit aisle and enjoyed with tea, without having their nature debated – while ‘size does not the biscuit make’.
One of the main differences between Jaffa Cakes and a traditional cake product, whether it be a cupcake or a slice of a whole cake, is that the Jaffa Cake can be held and dipped without leaving much residue on the fingers, she admits.
‘Most cakes will be sticky – as a result, the eating experience of the Jaffa Cake will be more similar to that of a traditional biscuit.’
However, this does not in any way detract from the treat’s ‘true nature’ – and the fact that Jaffa Cakes are cakes, she concludes.
