Tea Break Trivia
When is a Cake Not a Cake?
Each day before I hammer at the keyboard making things up, I spend fifteen minutes catching up on the news.
I restrict it to fifteen minutes — any longer, and I end up depressed and anxious for the rest of the day. Amidst the usual mayhem, war, death, destruction, and economic woe, I look out for stories that are a little different.
The other day, I stumbled across a gem: apparently, I’ve been eating McVitie’s Chocolate Digestives wrong all my life. Who'd have thought?
You’d think that was almost impossible, wouldn’t you?
Biscuit. Mouth. Hand to mouth. Bite. Chew. Swallow.
Even those who are hard of understanding ought to manage it.
Wrong!
According to the managing director of McVitie’s (who else?), there’s a right way and a wrong way.
When placing the biscuit into your mouth, the chocolate side should face down. The idea is the heat from your tongue melts the chocolate, enhancing the eating experience.
Apparently, it was designed that way. So he says. Although, he did add it was all a matter of taste, without even raising a smile.
Call me cynical, but I couldn't help wondering if McVitie’s share price had dropped recently.
And whilst we pick over the crumbs of controversy, let's enter another half-baked debate.
The humble Jaffa Cake — those modest sponge discs, wearing chocolate berets and sporting a tangy orange centre.
Now here’s a question to keep you awake at night: Is a Jaffa Cake a biscuit or a cake?
It’s biscuit-sized, comes in biscuit-looking packaging, is bought in the biscuit aisle, and tastes suspiciously like a biscuit.
If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck — it’s probably not a pig.
Wrong again!.
Technically, it’s a cake — as proved in court.
Back in 1991, McVitie’s found themselves in a tax-fuelled showdown. In the UK, cakes are exempt from VAT (praise be the Lord), but chocolate-covered biscuits aren’t.
The taxman smelt revenue. McVitie’s smelt injustice. And I smell a Kit Kat and a cup of tea brewing — all this biscuit talk is making me snackish.
So off McVitie’s trotted to court to defend the cakedom of their beloved creation.
Enter Mr D.C. Potter (no relation to Harry), legal adjudicator, and part-time Jaffa Cake expert. A man with his finger in many pies.
After considering twelve criteria (including the fact they go hard when stale, like all good cakes), he declared: Jaffa Cakes are cakes. Proving you can have your cake and eat it.
Crumbs! Cue national relief — and a small tax rebellion victory. A sticky situation averted.
But it didn’t end there.
Oh no.
People still argue about it — in supermarket aisles and on podcast panels across the land. A cake, they say, should be fork-worthy (be careful how you say that).
A biscuit should be hand-held. And what about size?
The Great British Bake Off’s Frances Quinn tackled that debate by baking a Jaffa Cake the size of a satellite dish: 1.75m wide, 80kg in weight, 160 eggs, 8kg of dark chocolate, and 15kg of orange jelly - in case you fancy baking one for your next-door neighbour.
Yet even Cambridge philosopher Tim Crane weighed in. (What do you mean you've never heard of him?) He says size doesn’t matter — which is what I’m always telling the wife.
"There are small cakes and big biscuits," he argues. Which begs the question: where would we be without philosophers? I dread to think.
There is one thing that jumped out at me during all this debate. Let’s call it the Ginger Nut in the room; why are cakes exempt from VAT?
That seemingly logical question was never discussed but maybe I just think differently, i.e. rationally.
So — is the Jaffa Cake a cake?
Legally? Yes. Philosophically? Probably (but we may need to debate that). Spiritually? Depends on your denomination and whether you’ve got a hotline to the Almighty — or Mr Kipling.
Common sense wise?
It’s a bloody biscuit!
Which brings me neatly onto the humble Eccles Cake…
Biscuit, pastry, or cake?
A discussion for another day, I think.