Last night I was sitting at the computer and I decided I needed a snack - I got up and made a cup of hot chocolate and found a pack of jaffa cakes in the bread bin - three left in the wrapper. I walked back to the computer desk and put my cup and my little stack of three jaffa cakes on the desk.
Then I ate one (I nibbled around the edge so as to make it possible to release the smashing orangey bit, then I ate it all together anyway.
I reached for the second jaffa cake, but there was only one left. In the space of twenty seconds, a jaffa cake went completely, silently, inexplicably missing, right under my nose - I searched the floor, stood up and shook out the folds in my clothing - looked under the desk, checked behind the cup. Gone.
Where did my jaffa cake go? I’m truly perplexed by this.
I’m absolutely sure there were three to start
I’m certain I only ate one
I can’t see anywhere that the missing one could have gone.
It is somewhere that will be so painfully obvious, when you find it, that you will smack yourself upside the head and howl. Unfortunately, no human alive can tell you where that is.
A biscotti disappeared from my bag. I know not how or when. I just know it was there, and then it was not. I suspect it is the same place as your Jaffa cake.
Somewhere in the cosmos, along with all the planets inhabited by humanoids, reptiloids, fishoids, walking treeoids and superintelligent shades of the colour blue, there is also a planet entirely given over to jaffa cakes. And it is to this planet that unattended jaffa cakes make their way, slipping away quietly through wormholes in space to a world where they know they can enjoy a uniquely jaffoid lifestyle, responding to highly jaffa-oriented stimuli, and generally leading the jaffa cake equivalent of the good life.
Trust me on this - you ate it somewhere between the bread bin and the computer desk. Examine the floor. You’ll find a trail of crumbs.
Much extensive research has show that it is impossible to carry a stack of Jaffa cakes anywhere without eating at least one. And you may not even remember doing it - it’s an autonomic reaction.
In fact, the reverse is true. Your Jaffa cake has, in an act of cakey osmosis, warped from our world into another dimension sadly bereft of Jaffa. Somewhere in that depressed plane, a fortunate soul has found your cake, and with the inspiration he or she gains from its orangey delight, will lead a revolution, ending the dominance of bland, unappealing baked goods. Soon they shall create their own Jaffa - perhaps dissimilar in name, but alike in that ineffiable quality that true Jaffa has - and one of these shall, in turn, depart to a new world, continuing the cycle.
I did consider the possibility that I might have eaten two, but remembered it as a single event - the act of eating one jaffa cake is, after all, quite similar to any other, but I ate the first one intending to try dunking the second in the hot chocolate, but it was suddenly gone. It’s a short trip from the kitchen to the computer desk and both my hands were full - I don’t think I ate it en route.
I had to look up ‘jaffa cake’ to know what they were. According to Wikipedia, there is an urban legend that jaffa cakes do not actually get their flavor from oranges: “There have been claims in the media that the orange centres in Jaffa Cakes are made from apricot and flavoured with tangerine oil.”
My theory is that the missing Jaffa cake, having been associated with the least sensational urban legend ever, lost the very will to exist and vanished.
mmmmmm…jaffa cake…droooool…I had a romance with an English boy who came to visit me a couple times. The first time he left to go back home, he left a jaffa cake sitting on the arm of the sofa. I couldn’t bring myself to remove it for a month. (no, I didn’t eat it)
Jaffa cakes…oh, look, now you’ve done it. I was being so good on the whole cakes at work thing, and now I have this craving for Jaffas. Good job they sell them in the shop on campus!
CherryBomb - I am open to bribery if it involves peanut butter cups…just sayin’, yannow.
They look like, and are sold as, biscuits(that is, cookies), but they’re actually flat crumbly sponge cakes. They are topped with a disc of tangy orange flavoured jelly and a thin layer of dark chocolate.
Jaffa cakes are ok - but I love Jaffas. Having an extra pack at the piccies in Whakatane to toss down the wooden floor at an appropriate moment just made going to the movies so much fun
PiM’s are the North American equivalent. I don’t know about brick-and-mortar availability in the US, but they’re available in loads of places around Ontario, at any rate.
