If you’re anything like us, you’ll have most likely accidentally scoffed down the best part of a pack of Jaffa Cakes at some point in your life. The moreish, spongy, tangy treat is one of the bestselling cakes (or biscuits, depending on how you class them) in the UK, so much so that producer McVities created machinery that could make a whopping 2,000 of them every minute.

It might be because of this that Mary and Paul decided to kick off this year’s Bake Off by asking the contestants to make their own from scratch, taking the basic cake back to basics with a lovingly handmade batch of top quality Jaffas. But our chefs and bloggers are way ahead of them – take a look at their interpretations of the quintessentially British treat below.

With a sponge as light as clouds, an intensely fruity orange jelly and rich, indulgent dark chocolate on the top, Kate Doran keeps true to form and knocks the mass-made variety out of the water. Despite the three separate layers the recipe is actually quite simple, and the fact that they look like the packaged variety but taste so much better will score you major brownie points with the family.

Want to dish out some chocolate orange treats at the end of a dinner party, but don’t think a blue and orange McVities box will cut it? Take a leaf out of two-Michelin-starred Marcus Wareing’s book and make some Jaffa Cake-inspired petit fours. Simple chocolate sponges are halved, hollowed and filled with Seville orange marmalade, before being stuck back together and sealed with melted chocolate. The orange peel garnish on top lends a simple yet effective cheffy touch.

Do you see simplicity as the coward’s way out? Want to really test your skills and produce something so incredibly impressive dinner guests will fall to their knees in awe of your culinary prowess? Bryn Williams has you covered with a recipe for his signature Odette’s Jaffa cake. Homemade marmalade meets chocolate mousse, orange jelly, a sablé biscuit base and orange-flavoured cream to create an absolute showstopper of a dessert. It might take more than three hours to make, but the results are well worth it. After tasting this, shop-bought Jaffa Cakes become a bit of a disappointment.

Graham Hornigold lets a chef’s secret out of the bag with this macaron recipe – if you want to make chocolate orange sound posh, swap the citrus fruit for its much more refined and sophisticated cousin, mandarin. Of course, it also helps if you have the piping skills of a Michelin-starred pastry chef, but chef Graham holds our hand throughout the three-hour process as best he can in every step of the recipe. If you are in fact handy with a piping bag and create these beautiful, intensely flavoured macarons, they’d make an incredible gift for any avid baker – or you could just eat them by yourself, one after the other, in front of the latest episode of Bake Off.