The Best Way to Eat a Jaffa Cake, According to McVitie's

Ever wondered the best way to maximize your Jaffa Cake enjoyment? You might be thinking, isn’t the simplest, most straight forward method to just to eat it? Of course, but you have to eat it in a very specific way, at least according to McVitie’s, the company that produces the snack cakes.

For the uninitiated, Jaffa Cakes are a classic British treat made with soft sponge cake, a layer of orange jelly, and covered in chocolate. They are delicious. Back in the '90s, a famous commercial for Jaffa Cake suggested that the proper way to eat the snack is to take a big bite right out of the middle, creating a half moon shape. Turns out, we’ve been absolutely lied to.

The Daily Mail reports that McVitie’s has now come forward, after years in the shadows, to reveal that you should actually nibble around the edges of the cake first, before biting into the center, where you’ll find that signature orange jelly. Why the change of heart? The company consulted with Dr. Stuart Farrimond, a food scientist, in order to determine “the best way to enjoy” Jaffa Cake.

And he actually used a scientific method: Farrimond recruited hundreds of people—which probably wasn’t difficult—to test out different ways of eating a Jaffa Cake. He came to the conclusion that the “All-Rounder” method, taking small bites before going in for the big one, allowed for an “almost perfectly optimized balance of zesty orange, slightly bitter chocolate and sweet airy sponge.”

The “Half Mooner” method—which first appeared in the aforementioned commercial—might be more common, but Farrimond insists that the cake can only be “fully appreciated” if you take his approach.

While I for one appreciate Farrimond’s commitment to using science to better understand dessert, you should feel free to take his advice with a grain of salt. Eating a Jaffa Cake the “proper” way is like drinking whiskey: Sure, there are some methods that experts prefer, but you shouldn’t let anyone tell you how to eat your cake.

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