Original subtitles

The humble Jaffa Cake.

As a nation, we spend around £88 million on them every year,

but we still can't agree on the best way to eat one.

Do you nibble around the edges?

- I like half moon.

- What about you lot?

THEY YELL

Total eclipse?

Yeah, me too.

- And the best place to see how they're made...

- ..is a factory that makes 1.4 billion of them every year.

However you scoff your Jaffa Cake,

chances are you've tried one.

Because here in the UK,

we go through a staggering 70 million boxes of them

every 12 months.

Oh, that's a glorious sight. I'm Gregg Wallace.

Wahey! Ha, ha!

And tonight, I'm following the journey Jaffa Cakes

make from batter...

That is lovely!

..to baking...

Does it smell good when they come off the other end? - It's gorgeous.

- ..and even bathing.

- We float the cake across a chocolate bed,

so that we can coat the whole of the jam side in chocolate.

- I want to float along on a chocolate bed!

- I'm Cherry Healey,

and I've travelled to Israel to harvest the oranges

that put the Jaffa into Jaffa Cakes.

And at the World Marmalade Championships, I discover..

Ugh! That'll put hairs on your chest.

..what it takes to become a winner.

Yes!

- And historian Ruth Goodman...

- Ooh!

- ..is discovering how a multimillion pound court case

really took the biscuit.

Or was it the cake?

- This is needed in court.

- Six million Jaffa Cakes are baked in this factory every single day.

- And we're going to reveal just what goes into making them.

Welcome to Inside The Factory.

This is the McVitie's Factory in Manchester,

where nearly 600 staff churn out 200 tonnes of cakes

and biscuits every single day.

They make a lot of biscuits here, from digestives to Penguins.

But I'm learning how they make one of their best sellers,

the Jaffa Cake.

The factory has been making these cakes since 1927,

and the process starts with a delivery of wheat flour.

So I'm heading to intake to meet logistics manager Craig Leech.

- Hi, Gregg. Pleased to meet you. - Good to meet you, my friend.

Right, what's on here? Standard flour I'd get at home?

- It just comes in with a special secret ingredient that comes in

already pre-blended, from the mill.

- So what does it do, then, your secret ingredient?

- Makes it lighter and it helps it rise.

But I really can't tell you any more than that.

- You're not going to, are you? - No, I really can't.

- The flour recipe may be a secret,

but it must be vital to making my cakes.

A tanker delivers 18 tonnes of mix to the factory, three times a week,

just for making Jaffas.

So how many Jaffa Cakes is that going to make?

Roughly? - That tanker there, alone, will get nine million cakes.

- So how many Jaffa Cakes are you making in a week?

- About 42 million in the week. - Just an extraordinary amount!

So where does it go now, then, all this flour?

- Straight into the silos that are just behind us here now.

- You don't do things by halves, here, do you? - No.

- First, a valve attaching pipes from the tanker

to the silo is opened.

Right. Pull it down?

Is that it? Have I made a Jaffa Cake? - No. Not yet.

- Then, the inside of the tanker is pressurised to blast the flour

into a 30-ton storage tank.

There's one silo for flour,

and the other's for sugar.

- When you're ready, Gregg.

- I'll be making a batch of 38,000 cakes.

- Pull the handle.

- And as the flour is released into the silo, the countdown

for my Jaffa Cakes begins.

How long to empty this truck? - About 40 minutes.

- You could make me a big birthday cake with that, couldn't you?

- Big cake. - With orange jam in the middle. - A lot of candles.

- From the huge silo, the flour is pumped along a network of pipes

to the mixing area...

..where I'm meeting factory manager Dee Smith.

Dee, lovely to meet you! - Hiya, Gregg.

- Who's in charge of making the base for my cake?

I've seen all the flour, right. What happens here?

- So the flour and the sugar all come together.

And then they go into this mixer. - That's your mixing tank?

- Yeah, it is. I bet you, it's a bit bigger than your mixer at home.

- Yes, it is. A bit. - Yes. - How much does it hold?

- 200 kilos. - How many Jaffa Cakes is that?

- That's about 38,000 Jaffa Cakes.

- Ha-ha!

So how many of those 200-kilo mixed batches do you make in a day?

- 96. - Wow.

So how many Jaffa Cakes do you make in a year?

- 1.4 billion Jaffa Cakes.

- Billion? - Billion.

- No, you don't. - Oh, yeah, we do. - You don't, do you?

- Oh, yeah, we do.

- Making cakes on such a massive scale is no mean feat.

For each mix, 75kg of sugar and 50 kilos of flour are drawn

from the silos and added to the mixer, where they're combined

with two kilos of sunflower oil,

and two and a half litres of water.

Anything else going in there?

- Yep. Liquid whole egg goes into the mix, Gregg. - How many? - About 950.

- Flour, sugar, eggs? - Yeah. - They get mixed up.

Do you add anything else to that? - Just like your cake mix at home,

we need to add the smaller ingredients, the raising agents.

So, bicarbonate of soda, baking powder.

- Bicarbonate of soda releases carbon dioxide

to make the mix rise quickly,

while baking powder helps to hold the shape of the sponge.

And if mixing in a tank load of 950 eggs wasn't enough, they add one

kilo of powdered egg as well.

What's the powdered egg for?

- So that helps give it a little protein structure, to help set

the cake as it bakes through the oven.

- Make it a little bit stronger? - That's absolutely right.

- The powdered egg also gives the cakes more nutritional value,

by adding calcium, iron, vitamins B1 and B2.

So how do you get it in? Tip it in? - No, we hoover

it up using this hoover here. - You suck it up with a hoover? - We do.

Why don't we swap places,

and you do the job?

So gently round, right down, right down and into the bucket.

- Wahey! - Right down. - I don't want to do it right down.

I want to see it coming up.

Look, this is very powerful.

Afterwards, can I use it to get in the gap in the stairs carpet?

- Absolutely not.

- We can never get right in with the one at home.

While my carpet may be out of bounds,

the super-sucker makes light work of sending the raising agent

and powdered egg directly into my mixture.

This is fantastic.

Look at that!

- OK, that's job done, Gregg. If you put it back in the holder...

- I don't want to. I want another bucket.

- Please, put it back in the holder. - Right, OK.

So far, we've made something close to a standard cake mix, albeit

on an industrial scale.

But not all the ingredients are quite so common.

- So you're going to add the curcumin into the mix.

- What's curcumin?

- Now, curcumin is a wholly natural, bright,

yellow-orange food colouring.

What that does is it helps give our sponge, like, that nice golden,

attractive appearance. - That's the colour of turmeric.

- That's absolutely right.

- The orange colouring of turmeric comes from the curcumin,

which is extracted by soaking the dried, ground-down roots

of the plant.

Oh, how beautiful.

That's a little bit of late-1960s psychedelia right there.

Look at that.

It might seem far out, but concentrated curcumin

is so strong that adding just 30g of it to each batch

ensures my sponge gets its distinctive, vibrant colour.

- It takes about six minutes for each mix.

- So have we got time to get a cup of tea and a biscuit?

- Maybe a cup of tea and a cake. - All right.

Now we're making a sponge cake mix.

But in the shops, Jaffa Cakes can often be found in the biscuit aisle.

The consequences of confusing these two products

could be extremely costly indeed,

as Ruth has been finding out.

Since their launch,

Jaffa Cakes have always been regarded as, well, cakes.

Until 1991, when their identity was called into question

by the multimillion pound court case that rocked the cake

and biscuit world. An urgent legal decision was required

as to whether this was a cake or a biscuit.

In 1973, under UK law, a value added tax, or VAT, was introduced

on all luxury goods.

Chocolate was subject to the tax,

as were biscuits with a chocolate covering.

Cakes, on the other hand, were deemed an essential food,

and chocolate-covered or not, zero VAT was added.

But in 1991, the tax authority switched Jaffa status from cake

to biscuit overnight.

- A letter almost literally came out of the blue.

- Top tax lawyer Dario Garcia was hired to make the case for cake.

- The vat-man, tax inspector, said, "We think it's a biscuit now.

"So it's standard rate VAT, 15%."

- And the company went, "Argh."

- Well, they did. They were very upset.

A flagship product, highly price-sensitive,

with serious financial consequences.

- Not only would a shift in classification from cake

to biscuit result in a multimillion pound tax bill for McVitie's,

the charge would mean a higher price for the consumer, too.

Biscuits are typically small, flat and crisp, while cakes are often

larger with a moist, tearable texture.

But which was the Jaffa? Cake or biscuit?

- It wasn't an irrational argument that it's a biscuit.

Where do you find it in the supermarket?

You find it with the biscuits.

What sort of box is it in?

Well, it's with the biscuits.

It's that sort of box.

It's not competing with a wedding cake, is it? - No.

- You know, it's competing with a

chocolate digestive, perhaps, you know.

- That's quite convincing, actually, isn't it?

To win, Dario had to persuade the judge that Jaffa Cakes

had far more in common with a wedding cake

than a digestive, or Rich Tea.

So he decided to submit a very unusual piece of evidence.

A supersized Jaffa Cake, which I'm going to recreate,

with former Great British Bake Off winner...

Frances! Hello! - Hello!

- ..and world record-breaking Jaffa Cake maker Frances Quinn.

So how big are we going for?

- A large dinner plate size.

Exactly the same as the one that was taken into court.

- So how can I help? - Start off by preparing the jelly.

- Jelly.

Legal mastermind Dario believed that a humongous cake that looked,

felt and tasted just like a Jaffa Cake would convince the judge

that they really were cakes and not biscuits.

- Been in there about 40 minutes. - That looks about right to me.

A beautiful, golden brown colour.

It's a giant cake!

With the cake cooled, time to administer a big slab

of Jaffa jam.

- Pop that on there, in the middle.

So it sort of just sticks itself.

And then the chocolate top.

I'm just going to splurge out the chocolate.

It's like a big chocolate flying saucer. - That's looking good now.

- You wouldn't go dunking that in a cup of tea.

- But would that argument win the case for Dario?

I think this is needed in court.

- Bye-bye, giant Jaffa Cake.

- So how did this super-sized piece of evidence hold up

when the case came to trial?

How did you use this as part of your case?

- With our nice, big Jaffa Cake,

he could see in a technical, physical sense,

it has the characteristics of cake, not biscuit.

No matter how big or small it is.

And nothing in the law about that, is there?

- If it's just a matter of size. - Yeah, then, it's a cake.

He took a bite and sort of broke it, and it didn't snap, did it?

It's much more like a sponge cake, isn't it?

- So the biscuit is... - Yes.

- ..is crisp and a cake is soft.

- Soft. And when they go stale, each go the other way, don't they?

Well, the cake becomes crisp, doesn't it? Harder.

- Yeah, when it's stale, yeah. - And the biscuit becomes soft.

And that was... - And you think that was the clincher?

- I do sense that, yeah.

- And what was the final decision?

- It's a cake.

- Should we have a slice of this cake, then, seeing as it's a cake?

- I think we should.

- Dario's giant Jaffa Cake convinced the judge,

and save the company and consumers millions...

That's a nice sponge.

..and he's been dining out on the story ever since.

This is definitely a cake.

Back at the factory in Stockport,

I'm one hour and 27 minutes into production.

My cake sponge has been mixed with a secret flour, and given

a burst of colour.

And now it's being piped to the start of the sponge production line,

where the conveyor belt stretches to an impressive quarter of a mile.

I'm meeting Dee at the start of it,

where my cake mix is fed into a 1.7-metre-long depositor.

Oh, wow.

That is lovely. - It's great, isn't it?

- It's like they're little Jaffa Cakes, are they?

- They are. - Absolutely fantastic.

- So this is the start of the process now,

where the magic happens.

- As the conveyor travels underneath,

the depositor squeezes 6.4 grams of cake mix

through funnels onto the pre-greased band.

- We're depositing them all at 141 rows per minute.

18 rows across.

And there's three deposits at a time.

So that gives us 2,538 cakes per minute,

travelling past our eyes.

- What?

Don't be ridiculous.

That is extraordinary.

Spaced at 68mm apart,

the 3cm-diameter blobs travel at 0.3mph

along the conveyor belt.

Hang on a minute, hang on a minute. These aren't going into tins.

- No, no.

- So how do they form a round shape, if you don't put them in a tin?

- What we want is we want the rheology of the batter

to be absolutely perfect. - Oh, what?

- Rheology is basically the science of flow and consistency.

- To create the perfect cake without the need for tins,

the consistency of the batter is carefully calculated.

So as each little blob lands,

they spread to exactly the right size for baking.

So if you were going to put them into little tins, you would need

bigger production and then you'd need to wash

them up afterwards? - Yeah, exactly.

- I don't blame them. I hate washing up, too.

Brilliant, right, now, what's next?

- So let's go and have a look.

- And with cake creation on such an enormous scale, it stands

to reason you need a seriously massive oven.

How long is it?

- So it's 100 metres long.

And there's 82 gas burners on it.

- That must take a serious amount of power to heat an oven that big.

- It really does.

So we use enough to power about 355 houses.

This is the first zone of the ovens.

- It's not actually as hot as I thought it was going to be.

- This zone is just over 100 degrees centigrade.

- And what happens in there?

- All of your raising agents start to warm up,

and the cake starts to grow

into the shape that we want it to.

- How many cakes in there at any one time, then?

- 15,000 cakes in the oven at any one point in time

and it takes just over six minutes to bake the cake.

- Does it smell good when they come off the other end?

- It's gorgeous.

- In the second zone, the temperature rises to 215 degrees Celsius,

and expands the bubbles in the mix to make them rise.

I reckon they are probably two or three times the size now.

And as my cakes travel through to the third section,

the temperature rises to a whopping 250 degrees,

crisping and browning my bakes.

Really lovely, lovely suntan.

- You can really see them start to lift and take that nice shape

and form, and start to have that golden colour now.

- The final zone, known as the hot box,

is ironically where the cakes are slowly and carefully

cooled to room temperature.

Cool them too quickly and the important air bubbles

in my sponge would deflate.

And we wouldn't want that, would we?

Hang on a minute. Are you flattening them?

- So you'll notice that, in the last zone, they're really quite inflated.

They start to collapse themselves,

and really all we're doing is making sure that that collapse is quite

even across the oven band.

- Getting up early, then collapsing.

Sounds like my weekend.

With the wind knocked out of them,

my little bakes march on to the end of the oven.

No! What? You've got a little seat?

You're kidding me! A little seat to watch the cakes go by.

- Absolutely. - Am I allowed to touch one? - Yeah.

Please help yourself.

- Oh, they're only warm, they're not red hot. - No, no.

- That is really light and fluffy, but the outside is going crispy,

especially on the edge here.

- It's good, isn't it?

- They're toasty. They're a little bit, like, oaty.

Like a sponge would be, but they're sweet. - Yeah.

And you can see that the crumb structure is just perfect.

- Crumb structure.

No-one talks like that, you know?

"Can we just get it soft and fluffy?"

That's what we say.

While the cake should measure close to 55mm in diameter...

Bull's-eye!

..a clever laser checks their height as well.

Each measuring 9.25mm.

12 sponges need to total between 105

and 115mm to fit perfectly into their packet.

The factory was built more than 100 years ago.

And so with limited space, my cakes are sent on a complex journey

to get their topping.

They're carried along 91 metres of conveyor to the second floor,

where they perform an extreme handbrake turn.

Look at that.

That looks like the M25 at rush hour. Look at that!

As they hot-rod down the conveyor, they cool to the ambient temperature

of around 19 degrees.

That is a river of cake.

Amazing!

A-mazing.

Most of my ingredients don't have to travel too far to get here,

but the oranges for my filling start their journey

much further away,

as Cherry has been finding out.

I've come to the city responsible for growing the fruit

that us Brits just cannot get enough of.

Clue's in the name.

The ancient port city of Jaffa

on the Mediterranean coast in Israel

is the birthplace of the Jaffa orange.

More than 400 varieties of oranges are grown around the world,

but its juicy centre and full flavour

make the Jaffa one of the sweetest.

So I'm heading 90km north of the city to the communal farm

where the oranges are grown.

And chief picker here is orange-growing expert

Amatsia Hanani.

Nice to meet you.

I'm joining him for a hands-on harvesting lesson.

Got a bag, got a ladder. I'm ready.

Originally known as the Shamouti variety,

these juicy Jaffas have been hand-picked like this since

they were cultivated by Arab farmers around 180 years ago.

But before I'm unleashed on the trees,

Amatsia gives me a few tips.

- It's simple. Not to pull it... - Yes.

- ...but just click. - Oh, I see.

So not pulling...

Flicking. Got it. - Step up.

- Got it. Here we go.

The free-draining soil of the region is perfect for growing

these deep-rooting trees,

so there should be no shortage of juicy oranges to choose from.

Wish me luck.

It's precarious. - It's OK.

- A ripe orange should have a sweet, fragrant smell,

and come off the tree with little resistance.

I'm going to say that I'm not going to be your best picker.

Coming down... - In one piece.

- Safely on the ground,

and I think I've done all right.

So that's not too bad, is it? - Yeah.

- Wahey! How many?

One, two, three, four, five, six.

Maybe, like... - Let's say 20. - 20.

- Not bad. - I'm getting that.

It takes 30 bags to fill this 400-kilo box.

In peak season, between December and March,

these expert pickers gather 500 tonnes of Jaffas and other citrus

fruit from these orchards every single day.

- Careful.

- So, onboard catering? Sorted.

To set the juice loose,

the oranges travel to a plant 10km away, where

I'm meeting Ilan Ben Schimmel,

the manager in charge of the big squeeze.

Let's get squeezing.

The load from the morning pick weighs in at eight tonnes.

That's about 45,000 oranges.

That's the most beautiful waterfall I have ever seen.

My just-picked Jaffas are sent through a series of conveyors

and rollers to shake off the leaves and

stalks leftover from the orchard,

before they enter the juicing factory.

Oh, wow. Oh, my goodness.

- Ah. - The smell. - The smell is amazing.

- It's like being inside an orange.

The fruit is given a thorough shower,

graded for size and just four hours after they were picked,

the Jaffas are ready to be juiced.

It's a similar process to get the juice for my jam

as it is to squeeze a breakfast glass of OJ.

So this is where the magic happens. Wow.

Look at that machinegun.

- By the way, we can do 65 trucks a day.

- The extractor uses hydraulic pressure to press each fruit,

squeezing the pulp out of a small hole on its bottom,

leaving the peel to fall away.

That has got to be the most satisfying machine

I have ever seen in my life.

Look at that. They're just squeezing the life out of them.

The oil in the peel is extracted and used in the food and cosmetics

industries, while the sweet-tasting juice is carried through a filter

to a super-sized juice tank.

Whoa!

Oh, my goodness me.

I expect nothing else. - It's amazing.

- This delicious, fresh juice is heated for 30 seconds at 90 degrees,

to kill off any germs and evaporate excess water.

That is the best of Mother Nature.

In its concentrated form, it's easier to transport.

So this precious cargo heads to Britain to make the jam

for our Jaffas.

Liquid gold.

Back at the factory,

my batter's been mixed, pumped and transported along 58 metres

of conveyors before being baked in a super-sized oven.

But it's still missing its all-important Jaffa layer.

So I'm heading to the jam station.

What's happening, Dee? What's going on?

- So this is where we put the filling onto the cake.

- The orange? - Yes.

- So this is the orange that came from Cherry, right?

- Yep, that's right.

However, so, Cherry's orange concentrate gets mixed with sugar

syrups and pectin, and that's kept at 50 degrees centigrade.

- 141kg of orange concentrate goes into each batch and

while the sugar syrup adds sweetness, pectin is a natural

setting agent found mainly in the rind of citrus fruits.

By adding more, it helps the mixture bind together.

- This is what it looks like. Do you want to have a taste?

- That is proper tangy, and that is like a smack around the face

with a bag of oranges.

Now, that is serious citrus.

But despite the added pectin, my jam's still quite liquidy.

If you're going to put that on my batch of cake, that's

going to run everywhere.

- And that would be a problem, a big problem.

And that's why we add a setting agent, called citric acid.

- Citric acid is also found in citrus fruits.

The acid draws the pectin from the orange and causes

it to react faster, so the jam sets more quickly.

In fact, it acts so fast it's mixed right beside the jam station,

just seconds before it meets the sponges.

- So it's really, really important that,

once we've mixed the citric acid into the filling,

that it gets to the depositor head very quickly.

- Is that because it's starting to set?

- That's exactly right.

- And it would clog up all your pipes.

- It would indeed.

- I had that problem, but I went to the doctor.

Moving swiftly on...

My 31,000 sponges sit flat side up as they travel through a Rolodex,

which sorts them into 18 precise rows.

A depositing head then squirts 4.5 grams of jam directly

onto the middle of the cakes, 36 at a time.

Does that citric acid affect the flavour of your orange?

- It does. It gives it an additional little kick.

- In that case, I think it deserves another taste.

Wow, that's firmed that up quite quick, hasn't it?

Still the deep, sweet orange,

just a little bit of a sharp finish. - Kick.

- Like a little bit of lemon zest.

My jam's got its extra tang, but its temperature

is still too high.

So it's sent through three cooling tunnels,

stretching 59 metres,

where it's force-cooled to around 15 degrees Celsius.

And in six minutes, it's set to rock...

..and roll.

- We need to roll the filling.

And if it rolls off like that, it's beautiful.

- Oh, look at that.

Look at that.

Now, that is how you roll a filling.

All right, but what happens if it doesn't roll?

What happens if it's still liquidy?

- We have a horrible, sticky mess,

which none of us want.

- Nice, smelly, sticky mess, though, right?

Sort of sticky mess you'd want your bathroom to smell of.

- Probably, but not here.

- Whether you're making an orange filling or marmalade, trying to come

up with a perfect recipe can involve a lot of trial and error.

So how do you make the perfect batch at home?

Cherry has been learning from the very best.

A glowing jar of orange marmalade is one of the world's

best-loved spreads.

We especially treasure it here in the UK.

And once a year in the Cumbrian hills, the Dalemain estate becomes

the epicentre for marmalade lovers.

It might not look like it, but this is where they hold

the World Marmalade Championships.

For this special occasion,

even the sheep are given an orange coating.

Every year since 2005, this house becomes a monument to all things

sweet and sticky.

The world's original Marmalade Awards are overseen...

Hi, Jane, lovely to meet you! - Come in!

- ..by their very own Lady Marmalade, Jane Hasell-McCosh.

Everywhere you look, there's marmalade. - Yeah.

- Are they just from the UK?

- No, they're not. We have probably over 40 countries now taking part.

- This year, they've had an impressive 3,500 entries

from all over the world.

So the world loves marmalade. - They do.

And it is such a wonderful global community of passion

for this wonderful citrus...

- BELL RINGS Oh, what's that? Is it dinner time?

- That is very significant, because that means there's

a gold award going on next door.

- Ooh.

A trio of judges led by top chef Dan Lepard

meticulously scrutinise each and every jar.

The special bell is only rung when a judge thinks they've come

across a possible prize-winning pot.

Today, I'm going to be entering a marmalade of my own.

But because my attempts normally end in disaster, I've enlisted the help

of Beth Furnell...

Hi, Beth. Lovely to meet you. - Hello, Cherry.

- ..the 2019 world champion and queen of marmalade making.

Do I bow? Curtsy? I don't know!

Where do we start?

- So we start with the oranges. The Seville oranges.

- Though a marmalade can be made with any variety,

we're using Seville oranges,

which are grown over winter in Spain.

And unlike sweet Jaffas,

they have a rather bitter taste.

Ugh! That'll put hairs on the chest. - Yes.

- But like all citrus fruits,

they have that special ingredient

that is vital to making marmalade, pectin.

What's pectin?

- Well, pectin is the glue that bonds cell walls together.

Cell walls in fruit and in plants.

- A jam is made from chopped or pureed fruit,

while a marmalade uses whole citrus fruits, including the rind.

And unlike a jam that needs additional pectin to set,

a marmalade can rely on the pectin

found in its rind, pips and pith to help it gel together.

First, we must cut the thick, zesty peel into

2cm-long strands.

- If it's not even, you'll be deducted points.

- No. - Yeah. - They are strict. Yeah.

Next, we juice the oranges,

and the peel is tenderised by soaking it in water,

along with the bagged-up pips and pith.

Then we turn up the heat.

- About an hour and a half of gentle

simmering to tenderise the peel.

- Boiling the pips and pith releases their pectin.

And once it's cooled, every bit of the juice is wrung out

to guarantee we get all of the oranges' home-made binding agent.

The pectin has come out.

Once orange juice and sugar added to the mix,

it's brought back to a rolling boil

for 15 minutes, and the pectin kick-starts into action.

- Water molecules are attracted to the sugar.

The pectin molecules will then bind to each other,

and they will form a mesh. - Right.

This process turns our runny marmalade

into a lovely, thick jelly.

And if you didn't have that chemical reaction, it would be runny.

It would be more like a smoothie.

- Yeah, it's essential, really, to marmalade-making.

- After 15 minutes of boiling,

you can tell if it's worked with a simple test.

- This is the wrinkle test. - Oh, oh, there's wrinkles!

- Does it wrinkle?

- I've never been so happy to see wrinkles.

Leaving my mixture to cool for ten minutes ensures the peel

doesn't rise to the top when I pour it into the jar.

- Put a skewer down, and just tease

any little air bubbles to the surface.

- I know you're the world champion,

but this does seem a little extreme.

Yeah, but these judges are looking for perfection.

I think you've done extremely well.

- Yes!

- And from you, that really means a lot.

But have I done enough?

My traditional Seville marmalade is up against a host

of orange varieties.

Thick and thin-cut zests, and all manner of flavours.

It's the moment of truth.

What will the judges make of my jar?

- Righty-ho. - It starts with the way it looks.

You want to see it almost jewel-like, glow out of the jar.

If there's peel in it, you want to see, like here, that it's evenly

distributed from the top to the bottom of the jar.

I think the texture of the peel is really good.

- It's looking promising so far.

- But of course, the most important thing is what it tastes like.

- Shall we dig in?

The moment of truth.

- It smells nice and vibrant.

- Quite a full taste, a generous taste to it.

- That's because I'm a generous person.

- Honestly, truly, I think it's really, really good.

- Does it get a bell-ring?

BELL RINGS

Yes! Yes!

Success!

Although I did get a little bit of help

from the reigning world champion.

At the Jaffa Cake factory,

we're one hour and 41 minutes into production.

My batch of 38,000 cakes

have been baked in a monster oven, and layered with a tangy orange jam.

Now there's just one ingredient missing - chocolate.

So I'm heading, sharpish, to the chocolate refinery.

But if, like me, you were imagining a world of chocolate rivers

and edible flowers...

..sorry to disappoint.

I wasn't expecting Willy Wonka, but I thought there'd be, like,

steam coming out and people mixing and stirring.

All right, so Brian's no Mr Wonka,

but he is the mastermind behind my cakes' chocolate coating.

- They call me the Jaffa Gaffer.

- Do they, really? - They do.

- From his control centre, the Jaffa Gaffer

decides the destiny of the factory's

entire chocolate supply.

- Everything in the chocolate refinery is automated, and we've only got

around about six people on the shop floor at any one time.

- Six people? And make how much chocolate?

- 33,000 tonnes a year.

And we send 3,500 tonnes of that into our

Jaffa lines in the factory.

- Wow. And we do it all from the screens.

Everything starts in the control room with a recipe.

It's very impressive, but it's also a little bit disappointing.

Sugar from the south east of England,

vanilla from Madagascar, and cocoa mass from West Africa

are held in tanks ready for Brian to make

the plain chocolate that will cover my cakes.

And how much of it are we making?

- So, we're going to make four one-and-a-half-ton mixes

that makes up a six-ton batch.

And that six-ton batch will cover about

two and a half million Jaffa Cakes.

- And of course, the Jaffa Gaffer has ultimate control.

- So if you'd like to click the button.

- Hang on, hang on, hang on.

I click a button here and we make six tonnes of chocolate? - Yep.

- I don't think my finger has had this much responsibility ever.

Seriously? - That button there, Gregg.

- With one press of a button...

We're making chocolate, right? - We are.

- ..the cocoa, sugar and vanilla are pumped along pipes

totalling 175 metres

to a mixing tank just above the production line,

where they are mixed for 20 minutes to create a paste.

1.5 tonnes of the chocolate paste then shoots down from the hopper

onto a conveyor.

Is that it? - This is it. - Is that how it starts?

- This is your batch, Gregg.

- So what is this? - This is the cocoa.

So this is around about a 40% cocoa mass mixed

with our granulated sugar and our vanilla.

- How much of this is in our batch?

What's the weight?

- One and a half tonnes in each mixer and then six tonnes

in each batch. - It's a good-smelling mix, innit?

I want to bottle that and use it as deodorant.

Constant stream of it going downstream.

- And it'll go downstairs to our end refining process.

- At this stage, the sugar crystals in the mix are too big

to make smooth chocolate.

But the Jaffa Gaffer can control this, too.

Do you feel like a James Bond baddie?

The chocolate mixture enters machines called refiners,

where crystals in the sugar are crushed by a series of giant

rollers, using up to 37 tonnes of pressure.

Spinning at 90 RPM,

the friction creates heat, and dries the paste while breaking

it down into tiny flakes.

Oh, that's a glorious sight.

Look at that!

From there, the now-refined chocolate mix travels

along industrial conveyors into one of six giant chocolate contraptions.

Hang on a minute.

That feels like an enormous washing machine.

It sounds like one as well. What is it, Brian?

- So this is a conch, Gregg. - What's a conch?

- So we've got three giant paddles inside this machine,

Gregg, and they are mixing the chocolate together.

- It's an enormous mixing bowl? - It is.

The original machines were shaped like a shell.

And the Spanish word for shell is "concha." - Right, OK, conch.

- In there, you've got a mixture of the flake that you originally made,

plus butter oil, veg fat, and cocoa butter.

- Wow.

Oh, my word.

It's like the sides of a Mississippi river paddle ship.

That's what it looks like to me.

The refined chocolate mix falls into the six-ton conch,

and a surrounding water jacket heats it to 70 degrees,

to lose excess moisture.

160kg of vegetable oil is pumped in,

and three giant paddles turn in opposite directions

at a speed of up to 25 rotations per minute to combine the ingredients.

Vegetable fat and cocoa butter

are also added to make the chocolate more liquid and creamy,

and it's mixed for a further six hours.

- Do you like the taste?

- Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, of course.

- There we go. - But that's really dense.

Look at that, look! That is so thick,

it's not even running down my finger.

- The flavour will be amazing. Try it.

It's the best thing about coming to work.

Good, huh?

- That is divine, isn't it?

Now it's passed my all-important taste test...

I mean, that, now - I get it.

Across that sharp orange,

this really brings it all together, doesn't it? - Yeah.

- ..the chocolate can leave Brian's chocolate lair.

It escapes through pipes to 30-ton tanks where it's safely stored,

ready for my cakes.

Whether it's on a Jaffa Cake or smothered over a biscuit,

we Brits have been enjoying chocolate-covered treats for years.

But when did this love affair first begin?

Ruth has been dipping into the history.

As early as the 1890s, Britain's snack lovers were tucking

into biscuits made by firms like Huntley and Palmers,

and Chocolate mass produced by factories

like Fry's and Cadbury's.

But who was it that combined the crunch of a biscuit with the

thick chocolate of a bar for the very first time?

I'm at the British Library to meet curator Polly Russell...

Hi, Polly!

..who's made an interesting discovery.

- This is what I really want to show you, Ruth.

So this is a book of patent applications from 1891. - Right.

Oh, yes. - What we have here is a patent application from Richard

and George Cadbury... - Cadbury. - ..chocolate manufacturers.

- Cadbury's were known only for producing chocolate bars,

but in 1891 they saw a gap in the biscuit market.

- When you look at the picture of it, it's rather splendid.

- Oh, wow.

Cadbury's had come up with a brainwave of

encasing a biscuit entirely in chocolate.

You've got your two layers of biscuit, you've got some

sort of filling in between, and then chocolate all the way around it.

- And they're explaining how they think that this biscuit

will be used. "Very nourishing, and a tempting article of diet

"for travellers, invalids and others."

- It's a really modern idea. - It is.

- A bar that combined two of the leading confectioneries

of the time seemed destined for greatness,

and the new creation would come in two handy sizes.

A one and a two-penny bar.

- This is a incredibly detailed and complex

biscuit to manufacture. - Yeah.

Yes, it would be, wouldn't it?

But despite its good looks and innovative concept, sadly

the bars were discontinued in the early 1900s.

That's extraordinary, isn't it?

Because, I mean, when you look at it, you think of how many chocolate

biscuits are just like that now.

Brilliant idea.

Just a little ahead of its time. - Yeah.

- I want to give this ground-breaking bar the credit it deserves.

So I've enlisted the help of elite chocolate designer Prudence State

to bring this lost bar back from the dead.

- I've been thinking, like, every single way that they could

have possibly made it.

And the only way I could come up with this is to make a mould.

- Prudence is using the patent from 1891

to make a replica of the two-penny bar.

But rather than using an original tin mould,

she's using silicone for her Cadbury's creation.

- This is milk chocolate.

With a lot of cocoa butter to try and make it thinner,

so it will go into all of the gaps.

- Oh, I see. - You want it really, really runny.

- Because the mould is so intricate, we're piping rather than spooning

our melted chocolate to ensure it gets into every bit

of the pattern. - Right. So we've got chocolate. We've got the mould.

I'm going to pop it on the vibrating table. - OK.

By the mid-1900s, biscuit-makers were also using vibrating tables

to force the chocolate into the detail of their metal moulds.

But Prudence likes to use a more basic tool.

- I have to use my finger, to make sure

it's gone into all the tiny crevices.

If you want to quickly finish off that bit before it sets,

and then pop it in the fridge.

- While the top layer of chocolate cools, we need the filling.

- So I made a biscuit mixture.

- Our top layer of chocolate has set hard, so we can add the biscuit.

The 1891 patent contained two full slabs of biscuit,

so they could use less of the more expensive chocolate, making

the bar more affordable.

- Press that down. But not too firm because

we don't want to break the chocolate underneath,

but make sure it's embedded. That's it.

And fill it up with a bit of this,

and then squish it down as flat as we can. - Yep.

And it's time to add the final layer of chocolate.

Moulding a biscuit in chocolate wasn't just a luxurious concept.

It also had the benefit of protecting the biscuit

and preventing it from going soggy.

So I'm deliberately overfilling it so it'll go in every little crevice.

20 minutes later,

and more than 100 years since it was last seen in Britain,

the world's first chocolate biscuit bar is making a comeback.

- Do you want to try taking it out? - Not me. - Yeah.

I think you should do it.

- Oh... - I think you should put some gloves on. - Gloves?

- So, the cotton gloves don't leave fingerprints on the chocolate.

- Ah, I see. - OK, so...

There we go. - Wow.

Fantastic details come out on the lettering!

Lost a little bit there, it's still in the mould. - A tiny bit.

- But basically that is what the picture shows. - It is!

- Spot on. - You've got the grids, you've got the letters.

Absolute perfection.

- This jumbo Cadbury's chocolate bar may have been ahead of its time,

but I think it's got a lot going for it.

Ooh! - Look at the biscuit.

- Well, I think it's a real shame this didn't become more popular.

It's yummy. And enormous!

At the Jaffa Cake factory, we're 11 hours and 26

minutes into production.

The chocolate has been crushed,

churned and tasted.

Whoa!

Now it's pumped from holding tanks to the production line.

And my next stop, the enrober.

Ha! Look at that!

The jam-topped sponges travel down the production line at

over 2,500 cakes a minute, crying out

for their carefully-crafted cocoa.

But before they can be coated,

the Jaffas have to perform a daring feat of acrobatics.

All of your cakes are jumping off the edge of a cliff!

That's quite a way to go for a little cake, isn't it?

In fact, the height of the drop has been calculated to make

the sponges rotate just enough to land face down in the chocolate.

- This is our chocolate enrober,

and we've got a bath of 200 kilos of chocolate,

and we push the chocolate up from that bath

up to what we call the chocolate flood. - Chocolate flood?

- A chocolate flood. - Sounds almost biblical, right?

You're not layering the chocolate on the top of the cake.

The cake is floating along on a chocolate river.

- Yeah. So, we float the cake across a chocolate bed,

so that we can coat the whole of the jam side in chocolate.

- I want to float along on a chocolate bed!

As the lucky little cakes travel downstream, a steady supply

of chocolate is pumped into the reservoir below.

As it fills, it oozes up through a wire mesh,

covering the jam side of my sponges.

It makes, like, little wavelets, doesn't it?

A turnover roller then flips them,

and creates an opposing pattern to give the Jaffa Cakes

their crosshatch finish.

Do you know exactly how much chocolate's on every cake? - Yeah.

2.4 grams of chocolate on every cake.

- Do you fancy upping it for a special edition?

For their daily quota of Jaffa Cakes,

the factory gets through a truly staggering amount.

- We use an amazing 13 tonnes of chocolate every single day.

- 13 tonnes of chocolate every day. - Every single day.

- Can I paddle in it?

Can I swim in it?

- No.

- That's enough liquid chocolate to fill 200 luxurious bathtubs.

But my cakes don't soak for long.

42 cakes a second

travel through the enrober, to be covered in chocolate that's

been heated to 31 degrees Celsius.

I do like Jaffa Cakes.

I've never actually had one hot off the press.

Is that all right? - You can indeed. Dig in.

- Well, it'd be rude not to, right?

There's the crisscross pattern, look. - Tastes good, yeah?

It's similar, but different.

- There's a really, like, big chocolate cocoa hit. - Yeah.

- Stronger than you would normally get. Is that because it's liquid?

- Yeah. First of all, it's still warm and still flowing.

And then, secondly, you'll notice that the texture is crunchier.

- The factory deliberately gives the sponges a crunchy texture

so they can cope with the additional moisture

from the chocolate and jam. As they cool,

that moisture is then absorbed into the sponge

over a period of two weeks,

ensuring the Jaffa Cakes have the perfect texture by the time

they hit the shops.

We've got the cake, we've got the orange filling.

We've now got the chocolate. We must be close to the end, right?

- We are, Gregg, follow me.

- The cakes have passed my personal quality control, so they head

on to the final part of their journey, where they get

the star treatment.

- Welcome to Hollywood, Gregg.

- Is it really called Hollywood?

- Hollywood is one of three packing cells on Jaffa Grid.

- I see, it's your name for this packing station.

What are the other two called?

- Cell Two and Cell Three.

- And it really is showtime here.

A chorus line of 2,500 cakes a minute cascade

into the packing station

before they're swept off by a series of paddles into lanes.

You've got Jaffa Cakes coming all the way through

like some sort of great big scalextric or a big arcade game.

It looks great, but why?

- So we call this the zig zags.

When the cakes come off the main packing line,

we want to separate them into two single streams of cakes

before they go into the primary wrapper.

- Is that what that "tsh-tsh" noise is?

A clever laser counts the cakes as they pass,

triggering an air jet, which blows them left or right,

into two even streams.

You like it here, don't you? - I do. I love it. - Why?

- When they're all dancing together and they're all dancing the tango,

it's just fabulous to watch.

It's only when you've got one doing the waltz

and one doing the tango that it gets messy.

- Once my Jaffa Cakes have pirouetted and twirled along their lanes,

a spacing machine uses clever magnetic forks to filter them

into the correct position for wrapping.

- So this is the first part of the wrapping process, Gregg,

and it uses bullet train technology.

So that series of forks is coming

down precisely in the middle of each cake

to even up the gaps in between them,

and start to count the cakes into the pack.

- Similar to how a bullet train uses magnets to power its travel, lasers

measure the gap between the cakes, and use magnetic pulses to position

the fork precisely between each one.

28 forks come down between the separate cakes every second.

That is an incredible bit of kit.

How fast is it going?

- 1,600 cakes a minute.

- Extraordinary.

I couldn't even eat them that fast.

Once they're spaced, the wrapping machine uses a sensor to count

the cakes into groups of 12.

They're sorted into single file and sealed in individual packets.

That clearly shows the speed and the precision.

Look at that.

The factory has baked, jammed and chocolate-covered my batch

of 38,000 Jaffa Cakes.

So they're boxed...

Last one? - Yeah, let's go. - Jaffa Cakes coming through!

And palletised...

That's like me, that is.

Taking it up to the next level.

..before heading to dispatch.

Is that my batch? - That's your batch, Gregg.

- That's my batch of cakes on its way!

Fantastic.

How many cases are on each panel?

- There are 78 cases on each pallet, Gregg.

- So how many individual cakes is on a truck?

- Over a million cakes on every truck.

- And how many trucks are leaving your factory every day?

- Six. - Wow.

That is very, very impressive, isn't it?

Very, very impressive.

Thank you very much.

Fancy a cake?

11 hours and 34 minutes after the start of production, my

cakes head to the distribution centre,

from where they're shipped to stores throughout the UK and Ireland.

Jaffa Cake lovers in Birmingham eat the most,

followed by London and Wales.

I think it's really impressive, the precision that goes into making

each and every one of these little Jaffa Cakes.

From the batter that's a perfect consistency...

That is lovely.

..to the jam that sets just seconds before it's flipped

into the chocolate.

HE LAUGHS

But what really amazes me is that six million Jaffa Cakes

fly out of this factory every single day.

Now, that is a lot of cakes, but not biscuits.

Definitely not. Cakes.