Jaffas (candy)
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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 New Zealand and Australian cultural folklore[citation needed]. 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 lolly, Jaffa is sometimes used to describe a chocolate-orange flavour.
James Stedman-Henderson's Sweets Ltd released Jaffas onto the New Zealand and Australian markets in 1931[1] The confectionery is currently made by Allen's Sweets (a division of Nestle) and Cadbury's.
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 New Zealand and Australian amateur sporting groups use Jaffas as a team name. In Dunedin, New Zealand every year 20,000 Jaffas are raced down Baldwin Street—the World's Steepest Street.[2] In 2008 the number of Jaffas to roll down the street has even been increased to 30,000 Jaffas.
The Australian supermarket business Coles has a generic version called "Choc Orange Balls."
Jafa, occasionally Jaffa, a derogatory term in New Zealand for an Aucklander. The word Jaffa is occasionally used as a derogatory term for Protestants in Northern Ireland.[citation needed]
