Homemade Jaffa Cakes

When the random letter generator came up with J for this month's Alphabakes challenge, I knew right away what I wanted to make. Jaffa cakes!

 

I love jaffa cakes and can never seem to stop once I've opened the packet... so I don't buy them very often! I had no idea how you could make your own but a quick search on the internet provided me with this recipe on the BBC Food website and it seemed fairly easy to follow, though as you can see from the picture, they didn't look perfect. They did taste great though!

 

 

You will need:

For the cakes:

2 eggs

50g caster sugar

50g plain flour

For the filling:

I packet orange jelly, made up according to instructions

200g dark chocolate, melted

 

The BBC recipe (if you follow the link above) has a slightly different method, whereby you mix the jelly with marmelade, but I don't eat marmelade so didn't do this. It worked fine with just the jelly - well, just about - but I think it probably would be worth trying with the marmelade.

 

Method:

Place the eggs and sugar in a heatproof bowl

Bring a little water to the boil in a saucepan and place the heatproof bowl over the top (as you would with a bain-marie) - don't let the bottom of the bowl touch the water. Beat the eggs and sugar for about five minutes until pale and fluffy.

 

Add the flour and beat well until you have a thick, smooth batter.

Pour the batter into a muffin tin - I used a silicon one as it meant I could grease it with a spray oil and not need to use cake cases. You only need to fill each indentation to about half way up as if you imagine the base of a jaffa cake, you'll recall it does need to be relatively thin like a flat disc.

Bake in the oven for 8-10 mins. These turned out perfectly -the right size, shape and colour, I was really pleased. Allow to cool.

Make up the jelly (see BBC Food link if you are adding marmelade). I used a wide plastic tub because you want the jelly to be relatively shallow so you can cut out the circles for each jaffa cake without them being too thick.

I used a round cookie cutter to cut out a small circle of jelly, though the circles aren't perfect as the jelly wasn't especially firm. Place the jelly onto the cakes.

Melt the chocolate in a microwave or bain-marie. I then poured the hot melted chocolate over the cakes... and unsurprisingly the jelly started to melt! Fail! I waited a while until the chocolate was a bit cooler then tried again, and that worked much better. On reflection, I wonder if I should have followed the BBC Food recipe and if mixing the jelly with marmelade would have made it less likely to melt when you pour the chocolate over. If you give this recipe a go, let me know!

Still, they look pretty good - like real jaffa cakes, only with a slightly messier top... the cake on the base turned out perfectly.

 

I took these to a party and they went down really well, several people commented they didn't know you could make jaffa cakes (well, I imagine you can make most things that are factory-produced at home...) and that they were really cool.

 

 

The letter for this month's Alphabakes challenge is J - I am hosting and please check out this blog post if you want to know how to participate.