So the suns out today, which can only mean one thing… alcohol! Today we are baking our ‘homemade’ version of a childhood favourite – Jaffa cakes, but as we are now grown up, we thought it was time Jaffa cakes did too. Before beginning the blog we discussed the idea of making a series of posts of our take on classic shop-bought biscuits, this one being the first.
We aren’t trying to make them look shop bought and create the flawless biscuits & cakes you see in a patisserie window, remember these are homemade and we are not professionals! So if they don’t look perfect, don’t stress, ours don’t either and they still taste great (trust us, we did extensive taste-testing).
- 135g pack of orange jelly
- 125ml boiling water
- 75ml Cointreau
- 2 medium eggs
- 50g self-raising flour
- 50g caster sugar
- 200g plain chocolate
- 1 tsp vegetable oil
- Line a 25x35cm baking sheet with cling film to prevent the jelly from sticking.
- Prepare the jelly by cutting into pieces, place them in a jug, add the boiling water and stir until dissolved.
- Now add the Cointreau!
- Pour the jelly mixture into the baking tray, it’ll be around 0.5cm thick & pop in the fridge to set.
- Pre-heat the oven to 170C.
- Using an electric whisk, whisk together the sugar and eggs until they have tripled in size. The mixture should be quite stiff at this point – it may take a few minutes.
- Carefully fold in the sieved flour making sure to keep in as much air as possible.
- Half fill well greased cupcake tins.
- Bake in the oven for 8-10 mins.
- Once the cakes have cooled it’s time to turn them into Jaffa cakes.
- Begin by cutting the jelly into 24 disks using a 1″ round cutter .
- Melt the plain chocolate & oil in a heat proof bowl over boiling water, allow to cool down for a bit or else the chocolate will melt the jelly (and we don’t want that!)
- Assemble by placing a jelly disc on top of each cake. Then add a spoon of melted chocolate onto each Jaffa cake, using the back of the spoon to smooth the chocolate over the jelly and cake. You may want to use a fork here to create a pattern in the chocolate before it sets, but thats completely up to you!
- You can leave out the Cointreau, replacing with 75ml of water for those who want to make their Jaffa cakes child friendly.
- If you don’t have any cupcake tins you can use a lined baking sheet and drop spoonfuls onto it, will work just as well – they just wont be as uniform.
We had a load of jelly let over from making these, so decided to make one giant drunk Jaffa cake! Using and 8″ cake tin for the sponge and small bowl as a template for the jelly, can’t wait to dunk that in our cup of tea!
