h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

biscuits undoubtedly.

This issue was settled by a VAT and Duties Tribunal some years ago. McVities baked, and brought into the tribunal, a jaffa cake that was 12 inches in diameter. It is unclear whether this was to prove that it had all the characteristics of a cake or just to bribe the tribunal chairman.

Either way the tribunal ruled that the Jaffa cake was inded a mini-cake made of sponge not biscuit.

The distinction was important to McVities as a choclate covered biscuit attracts VAT at 17.5%. However a cake is zero rated.

aha, so what if they were only putting it on?! it could be a biscuit getting away with no VAT!

Nah man... its made of sponge... it has to be a cake. Still imagine a foot wide jaffa cake!!! WOW!!! And as for cake or biscuit... its called a Jaff CAKE!!! CAKE CAKE CAKE!!! Not a jaffa biscuit!

I could be wrong (It has been known) but I was told that the
all important cake/biscuit distinction was settled because
Jaffa cakes go hard when stale (like any other cake) but
biscuits go soft when stale.

Anyway, to my mind they resemble cakes more than they do
biscuits. "Jaffa Biscuits" doesn't have the same ring to
it, does it?

Glenn

Ah the soft hard argument. I like it my friend! Ill explain that to my friends.

Of course, by the time it's gone stale you don't wanna eat it, and so in the quest to discover whether it's a cake or a biscuit, youve wasted a perfectly good jaffa cake, and a perfectly good biscuit too. dont do it, i say! dont do it! who cares what it is, just eat and enjoy, my friends. after all, the jaffa cake is possibly the best snack thing in the world. and for the sake of argument, id say its an extraordinary pioneering experiment, to make a cake the size of a biscuit, and bring the wonder of light spongy orange cake to you in your lunchboxes. i rest my case.
ps, hi alex :-p

Ah!!! The fly lover is here!!! Best way to let a Jaffa Cake go stale is to try and eat the whole tube very quickly and then when they start to get sickly (eat a whole tube in a minute and it WILL happen) leave the last one and put it in a padlocked box so if you do get peckish then you cant eat it. Then go to a party and make sure you pass out in the hosts house (the best way to achieve this is to get absolutly rat-arsed). When you do eventually get home (hopefuly many days later) the cake should have gone stale. As a precaution you should buy a tube of Jaffa Cakes before you check the experiment so you dont have to eat it.

P.s. Hi Mel :b

Ahh, you seem to speak from experience! so, when you get peckish and want that jaffa cake, do you eat the key to the padlocked box instead? but then when you wanna see what state your jaffa cake's in (to determine whether or not its a biscuit) then you won't be able to get into the box to find out. and without this vital information, the experiment is void and youve once again lost a perfectly good jaffa cake. i personally think that is really upsetting
p.s. so alex, howya doin?

No you dont see what I ment. You buy a whole tube before you check on the experiment cake so you wont have to eat it.

Ps Im fine thanks Mel. Just started college... good times so far!

i don't get this inability to eat a whole tube of jaffa cakes. i've done it before and i'd do it again i tell you, i'd do it again *evil laughter*

ahem, as i was saying they clearly are biscuits. Kimble's argument was that 'biscuit' comes from the french to bake twice and jaffa cakes aren't baked twice and so cannot be biscuits. this is clearly b******s as most biscuits aren't anyway. also they are shaped like biscuits and i have it on good authority from Miss Helen McVittie herself that they are.

another unrelated biscuit debate. is a cookie a type of biscuit or another thing altogether?

YOu rally havent been following have you? We have the 'stale' argument whereby Cakes go hard and buiscuits go soft... Jaffa cakes go hard. We have the fact that Jaffa cakes are made from sponge. We have the highly complex TAX argument. We have the fact they are called Jaffa CAKES. What do you have? Your only argument is their size and the proposterous idea that you have asked the inventor.

Here is another comparison... Fairy cakes. Made of sponge... small and are they biscuits? NO!!! You are wrong wrong wrong!

oh fardles! how do you know they go hard? you're just taking Glenn's word for it. hmmm, well i don't know. i shall allways think of them as biscuits in my heart.

I tested it myself as a matter of fact.

thats what they all say.

As i said before, although i dont think anyone was listening to my hiiiighly valid point, a jaffa cake is a cake - the only dispute that arises is over its size, and thats what makes a jaffa cake a really great cake: the fact that you can take it to work/school/college/relationship advice sessions/houses of parliament without having to slice it up prior to the event and wrap in it celophane, only to have all the cream filling leak out and stick to your sandwiches. a jaffa cake is a pioneer into the world of portable cakes. the bad thing about this is that no one else seems to have realised this, and we therefore cannot enjoy the luxury of portable chocolate/christmas/sticky toffee pudding/etc cakes - excepting of course those cake bar thingies you can get, but all the same, they still dont do xmas cake/sticky toffee pudding/etc flavours, which is something i seriously think needs rectifying and FAST!

Official ACE verdict: CAKES!

*mutter mutter mutter* i shall not be shaked from my beliefs.

We aint tryin to change your beliefs... you were just wrong.

left jaffa cakes for day or so and returned to them. they were neither hard nor soft but as fresh as the day i bought them, this proves nothing save for the superiority of the mcvities brand.