Weekend Carnivore

Do jaffa cakes qualify as a biscuit or a cake? This quandary has been pondered with such frequency in British society that it may just rival that of the chicken and the egg. I say, stop wondering and make this amazing jaffa drizzle cake!

I have had this Jaffa Drizzle Loaf recipe in my ‘to try’ folder since I first saw it in BBC Good Food Magazine in 2006. That is a long time to hold out on a recipe. For New Year’s Eve I decided to borrow the infamous misquote from Marie Antoinette and let myself eat (the) cake. A decision made much easier by the prospect of sharing the jaffa drizzle cake recipe with a house full of party guests.

Jaffa drizzle cake recipe

It turns out that this jaffa drizzle cake was truly worth the wait. Unlike actual jaffa cakes it is very much a cake but it really does taste near exactly like like a jaffa cake. The main difference being that the cake part is ultra moist and carries just the right level of orange flavour.

Happily, the jaffa drizzle cake recipe is also one of the more simple cake recipes I have followed in recent times. All the mixing of the cake batter is done by hand with a wooden spoon. Saving me from having to get my electric mixer out. One less thing cluttering up my worktop is never a bad thing.

The only place that I, ever so slightly, strayed from the written recipe was to not so much drizzle the dark chocolate as to lather it on the top of the springy spongy orange cake. Admittedly, I did at first attempt a drizzle but it wasn’t looking as neat as I would wish for a party presentation. In the end, I resorted to just spreading the melted dark chocolate all over the top of the cake, allowing it to drizzle down the sides. I have to say, I will do it exactly the same again because once the chocolate hardened, the layer of chocolate added a lovely slight crunch to each slice of the cake.

This is certainly a keeper of a cake and I shall not be leaving it another four years before I once again make this jaffa drizzle cake recipe.