Case in point
Is a Jaffa Cake a cake or a biscuit?
Verdict
It is a cake
Team Cake is right, and unusually for this Court, the law agrees.
The reasoning
The Court accepts that a Jaffa Cake behaves socially like a biscuit. It lives in the biscuit aisle, it arrives in a biscuit-shaped packet, and it is eaten beside a cup of tea with the casual disregard normally reserved for a digestive. None of that settles what it actually is.
The decisive test is staleness. Cake goes hard as it dries out; biscuit goes soft as it absorbs moisture. A Jaffa Cake left in the open hardens. Its base is also a thin sponge batter rather than a short, fat-heavy biscuit dough. On composition and behaviour, it is a small cake with a jelly disc and a chocolate lid.
This is not merely the Tribunal's opinion. In 1991, a UK VAT tribunal considered the same question, because chocolate-covered biscuits attract VAT while cakes are zero-rated. McVitie's argued the cake case, famously baking a giant Jaffa Cake to make the point, and won.
Confidence is high rather than absolute for one reason only: everyday language is set by habit, not by baking chemistry. If you insist it is "a biscuit" in conversation, you will be understood. You will simply be wrong.
How the Tribunal decides
Both sides state their case in full. The Tribunal separates matters of fact from matters of taste, weighs the arguments, and returns a single verdict with a confidence rating. Subjective disputes get lower confidence. Settled facts get higher.
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