Jaffas

Jaffas is the registered trademark for a small round sweet consisting of a soft chocolate centre with a hard covering of orange flavoured, red coloured confectionery. The name derives from the Jaffa orange. The sweet is part of Australian and New Zealand cultural folklore. Jaffas have often been sold in movie theatres and have gained iconic status because of the noise made when they are dropped (accidentally or deliberately) and rolled down sloping wooden floors. Through association with this sweet, Jaffa is sometimes used to describe a chocolate-orange flavour.

James Stedman-Henderson's Sweets Ltd released Jaffas onto the Australian and New Zealand markets in 1931. The confectionery is currently made in Australia by Allen's Sweets, a division of Nestle and in New Zealand by Cadbury. The Cadbury Jaffas are also exported to Australia.

The orange coating on Jaffas was developed by a Sweetacres food chemist, Tom Colston Coggan. He experimented with many syrups before settling on the flavour that is unique to Jaffas. His original experimental syrups were stored in his home refrigerator and used as topping on icecream up till the death of his wife in 1985.^{[citation needed]}

A number of Australian and New Zealand amateur sporting groups use Jaffas as a team name. In Dunedin, New Zealand every year a vast sum of Jaffas are raced down Baldwin Street—the World's Steepest Street, as part of the Cadbury Chocolate carnival, which is held in conjunction with the New Zealand International Science Festival. The initial number of 20,000 Jaffas has now been increased to 30,000 Jaffas.

The Australian supermarket business Coles has a generic version called "Choc Orange Balls"; similar products are made by other manufacturers.

The word 'Jaffa' is also used in cricket to describe a very well bowled or unplayable delivery that often beats the batsman.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia