MY FOOD HELL (Vegan Jaffa Cakes (with a twist))

For those of you that don’t know what a jaffa cake is, let me explain.  Jaffa Cakes are chocolate and orange jelly biscuity cake things, that just happen to be immensely popular in the UK.

I don’t know where my dislike for jaffa cakes comes from? Maybe I was confused by the whole ‘looks like a biscuit but calls itself a cake’ thing, maybe my bully of a brother stuffed a whole packet in my mouth when I was a baby or maybe I was eating one during some horrendous childhood tragedy that I thankfully can’t recall?

What I do know is that I am very much alone in this. I have never to this day met anyone who even mildly dislikes them and this love for chocolate orange cakey things doesn’t stop at your typical Joe Normal. It extends as far as many as some of the best restaurants and palates in the world.

I can’t remember the dishes, because to be fair it was quite a while ago, but at both Gordon Ramsay’s Royal Hospital Road and Alain Ducasse’s Jules Verne in Paris I ended up being tricked (in my opinion) into eating a desert that tasted similar to jaffa cakes. Considerably better quality I concede, but a jaffa cake all the same. Even at the Fat Duck, during the best eating experience of my life,  my last taste of the night was a chocolate a Mandarin Aerated Chocolate Peti Four…jaffa cake. Now as far as Ramsey and Alain are concerned I would find it highly unlikely that jaffa cakes were an immediate source of inspiration, but Heston on the other hand? Well, considering his theories on childhood nostalgia I wouldn’t put it past him.

So I figured I’d set myself the hardest task I could before I head of to this place  tomorrow. I thought I should attempt to make not only my most despised flavour combination into something I enjoyed eating, but I’d make it even more difficult by making it vegan friendly.

This means no butter, no milk, no eggs, and no cream. In other words, none of the good stuff.

I won’t go too into the reasons why I dislike vegan cooking because it’s not really dislike of vegans themselves or their food. I respect veganism immensely but I intensely dislike it when they hand me a cake and call it a vegan cake, Vegan as far as I’m aware is not a flavour (unless it actually contains vegans), so I don’t want or need to know. Just let me try it and I’ll tell you if I like it or not. Telling me first that it’s lacking the necessary ingredients for proper baking and enhancement of flavour isn't unlikely to get me salivating. It might even lead to me carefully slipping it into my pocket the minute your back is turned.

On another note I intended not to use any crappy substitute ingredients.  I’m going to use science and lots of it, and it’s going to look badass.

My Component parts

The Backwards Chocolate Sponge cake.

So how do you make a decent sponge cake without using eggs? I’ve tried a lot off vegan sponge recipes and they’re really not that hot.

The importance of eggs is that not only do they act as a stabiliser for the structure once their proteins have coagulated, so as to stiffen the final mixture, they also help form the initial structure of compact bubbles that is essential for a good rise and a light texture.

Whist we can use xanthan gum to stand in as stabiliser (I didn’t but you could), the method of creating a compact network of bubbles in the mixture prior to heating is seemingly impossible without eggs.

...Or is it?

I did have a plan for this but to be perfectly honest I really didn’t think it would work. In fact after the first three disastrous attempts I almost gave up.

My plan was to create a huge number of tightly packed bubbles in the initial cold mixture. So many, that the mixture really didn’t need to rise that much at all. To do this I used a Cream Whipper .

 

I suspected that the cream whipper could inject the nitrous oxide into a basic sponge mixture without any eggs or milk. The result out of the whipper should be a light mouse like structure that is made out of compact bubbles.

This trick is to get the sponge mix thin enough to be forced out of the end of the whipper but thick enough so that it holds its structure long enough to cook. In other words we’re doing the raising before we bake, hence the backwards reference.

Getting this balance right was indeed the key. And turned out to be the most difficult part of the dish.

My initial ingredients were

200g white self-raising flour

A few tsp additional baking powder

200g sugar

50g coco powder

100g orange juice

100g water

I then added more and more water and orange juice till I got a more liquid consistency. I think it was about 100g more but I didn’t measure.

Pour the mixture into the whipper and load a charger. Hold the charger upside down and pour quickly into a muffin mould.

Put in the oven straight away at 160oC and cook until the mixture had browned slightly, raised a little and has stiffened up. Do few at first and use spare ones to test along the way?

If the mixture doesn’t rise and hold you need a stiffer mixture (add more flour). If it’s sticky and gooey inside you need to bake it for longer.

The Chocolate Tuile

Use the same mixture as above and the cream whipper. But squirt lines of mixture on a non-stick surface and cook at the same temperature until they begin to brown.

When you take out the tuile remove it straight away and curve it in a glass until it stiffens.

The Orange jelly

Half and half good fresh orange juice and Grand Marnier liqueur Heat up with a 0.5% amount of Gellan Gum. Pour the hot mixture onto a warm baking tray and cool.

The Chocolate Orange Chantilly

The recipe of this was introduced to me by this man http://hervethis.blogspot.com/ through one of his books.

Chocolate Chantilly is basically a way of making chocolate mousse using nothing but chocolate and water.

It works by introducing air into the mixture at an ever-decreasing temperature. When the temperature of the mixture is right the fatty droplets contained in the cocoa butter crystallise and the mixture changes consistency to that of a light mousse.

To do this, pour the same gram for gram of water and chocolate into a bowl and hold the bowl over a pan of hot water. Mix until the mixture is dissolved.

Then transfer the bowl to a pan filled with ice and water and whisk rapidly as the mixture cools. At some point the mixture will suddenly thicken and fluff up. Keep whisking until you have your desired consistency.

You could as I did substitute some of the water you mix with the chocolate for some Grand Marnier or any other flavoured liquid. 

The result.

 

A somewhat different take on the jaffa cake I agree. But because of the heavy amounts of booze involved I didn’t hate it at all. In fact I really liked it.

I still would have preferred an Amaretto jelly and an egg in my sponge.  But you can’t always get what you want, can you ?

 

 

Comments

[yvonne]

your site name is pretty interesting, very catchy. I'll be visiting more often...

[thewaroncookbooks]

Thankyou.

[msmarmitelover]

In France you can buy loads of variations on the Jaffa cake; with white chocolate, with grapefruit fllings...
I cheffed at a Vegan restaurant. I'm not a vegan and I did feel that their cakes lacked butter but Pogo cafe's vegan cakes are bloody good...promise

[msmarmitelover]

That recipe looks completely amazing...I'm going to send it to Pogo cafe.

[Mark]

Is the next reciepe going to be a proper vegan cake then, with real vegans?

[thewaroncookbooks]

Mark, do you want me to do that for dead vegan jaffa cakes for the next article ? If so tell me know.;)

Thanks Msmarmite. I've heard excellent things about Pogo form my vegan friends. If they have any comments I'd be interested to hear.

Not sure about grapefruit and white chocolate though. Can you buy them over here ?

[A Girl Has To Eat]

Oh I love jaffa cakes. I have been known to eat a whole box in one go, and more than on one occasion.

[Mark]

If you find a vegan I'll publish the story :P

[Pe]

I HATE Jaffa Cakes. But this looks good.

[Venus]

Oh my goodness. When I saw the first picture I must say I was tempted to pass by but I am glad I clicked on the full post because that thing at the end - your version of the jaffa cake - looks delectable. I will have to try this too! Thank you for another fabulous recipe.

[George@CulinaryTravels]

I hate Jaffa Cakes too, but, would happily eat that - it looks delicious.

[RamonGustav]

Hi I liked your note, add your site to your bookmarks.

[leanne]

hmm, i am vegan - yet, was rather held by when you said about them giving you a vegan cake. The reasn this has to be done is becuas esadly, the vegan isn't cherished as normality yet - it is not normal to eat a hens period, so, I would prefer to have a 'vegan' cake, and also, it highlights that the taste is not due to death, sperm or animal use.

On the other not - very nice - just watch your wording amd I'll watch your food (drool).

[leanne]

p.s. sorry for the bad mis-spell due to quick-type!