The Jaffa Cake That Lies To You (Tesco Value Jaffa Cakes)

Member Name: faders321

Product:	Tesco Value Jaffa Cakes
Date:	02/09/08 (145 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Tasty and cheap

Disadvantages: Often get contaminated with allergens

I love Jaffa Cakes but the only thing I don't like about them is how much they cost, that's why I decided to start buying Tesco Value Jaffa Cakes. I know that a lot of people really hate Tesco Value and won't buy anything from that range just because they think it'll be bad quality because it's cheap. I however am happy to buy most things from their range because I've found that 90% is just as good as the brand name versions and a few products have actually been better than their Tesco Finest counterparts. So when I bought this box I had quite high expectations from it.

A box of 24 Tesco Value Jaffa Cakes will cost you 62p which makes them a mere 3p each! What a bargain!! They come in a white box, typical Tesco Value theme, it has 24 Jaffa Cakes written in red and the Tesco Value logo in the top left hand corner plus in the top right hand corner here are 2 Jaffa Cakes one of which has been cut open so that you can see what they look like. On the back of the box are the ingredients and the nutritional values. Inside the box the Jaffa Cakes are packaged into two groups of twelve, both of which are in a clear plastic wrapper to keep them fresh.

The ingredients, which I include for people who have allergies, are:

Glucose-Fructose Syrup, Plain Chocolate, Wheat Flour (Wheat Flour), Sugar, Egg, Sucrose Syrup, Dextrose, Orange Juice from Concentrate, Citric Acid (Citric Acid), Humectant (Glycerol), Gelling Agent (Pectin), Raising Agents (Disodium Diphosphate, Sodium Bicarbonate), Flavouring, Acidity Regulator (Trisodium Citrate)
Plain Chocolate contains: Sugar, Cocoa Mass, Cocoa Butter, Vegetable Fat, Emulsifier (Soya Lecithins)

The allergy advice given on the packet says that they contain Wheat, Gluten, Egg & Soya and that they cannot guarantee that the ingredients are nut free. However my friend who is lactose intolerant (she can't eat milk) bought a packet of these thinking that they are suitable for her because it doesn't say on the packet that they contain any milk but she came out in a bad rash and felt sick for days. Those are both side effects that she suffers from eating things containing lactose (which comes from milk). She emailed Tesco to ask them why the milk wasn't listed on the ingredients or the allergy advice. They said that they didn't know it was in there but after testing some Jaffa Cakes from the same batch they agreed that there must have been some cross contaminated because they are made on a line which handles milk. They sent out stickers to all their stores to put on the sides of the boxes saying that there was a milk contamination in them but after the batch had been sold they stopped putting stickers on. Neither she nor I think this is really good enough as the box doesn't state anywhere that they are made on a line handling milk and apparently the contamination has happened several times before, the last incident before my friend noticed had been a mere month and a half before. So my advice is that if you are lactose intolerant then you should avoid these as they are likely to be frequently contaminated by milk, Tesco even admits it themselves but you won't find it written on the box anywhere. I have just googled the product and it would appear that the same problem happened in oct 07, the link to the food standards agency to read more about that case is:

http://www.food.gov.uk/news/newsarchive/2007/oct/ tescojaffacakes

Anyway these Jaffa Cakes each contain:

Calories:
42kcal, 2% of your GDA
Sugar:
6.0g, 7% of your GDA
Fat:
1.0g, 1% of your GDA
Saturates:
0.6g, 3% of your GDA
Salt:
trace, < 1%

They are not very healthy as they do contain a lot of sugar and saturated fat but you'll find that with most brands of Jaffa Cakes. Once you open the packet you can smell the chocolate and the orange which is quite nice, I find that these smell better than the McVities ones. I'm sure that most of you know what a Jaffa Cake looks like but I'll describe them for you just in case. It is basically a layer of sponge with a thin layer of chocolate on the top and a big bit of jelly orange in the middle, yum! Tesco Value Jaffa Cakes have a soft spongy base which has a vaguely sweet taste to it. If you keep them airtight then the sponge will stay nice for quite a while otherwise they dry up quite quickly. The chocolate on the top is quite thin which is good for some people, I personally would have preferred it to be a bit thicker but my husband likes it being this thin so that the taste of the orange is stronger. The chocolate is dark in colour and has a slightly bumpy texture on the top, it tastes nice, quite sweet which goes well with the best bit of the Jaffa Cake, the orange centre. This is a very thick orange substance a bit like jelly but thicker, it's very hard to describe. It's only about 2mms thick but that is enough. Its orange colour is a giveaway to its flavour. It tastes very refreshing and the orange balances out the sweetness of the sponge and the chocolate.

You can eat Jaffa Cakes in one of three ways; you can be polite and bite into it which allows you to taste all the different parts together. Alternatively you could be a bit piggy and put the whole thing into your mouth at once, I really don't like doing this but I've seen my husband do it a couple of times before. Last but not least you can have some fun trying to scrape off all the chocolate with your teeth first, which is quite easy as it is so thin, then peeling off the orange and putting it to one side, munch the sponge and finally eat the refreshing orange centre. That is a lot of fun but you can end up with chocolate crumbs everywhere if you're not careful.

Overall I think that these are a good Jaffa Cake because it has a lovely taste and is really cheap considering the fact that you could easily end up paying twice the price for just 12 McVities Jaffa Cakes. For allergy suffers though this is a bad product and because of that and the fact that they need more chocolate I only give them a 6 out of 10, it would be a lot more if they could learn to list the ingredients properly.

Summary: Nice if you don't suffer from allergies