Tunnock's Teacakes: Uddingston's Foil-Wrapped Dome

Each major claim carries one of three labels. established means supported by primary records, official bodies or several independent reliable sources. shared means the core fact is sound but sources disagree on details, dates or interpretation. traditional means widely repeated but not traceable to a primary or independent source.

Most of the company history comes from Tunnock's own published timeline. For a continuous family firm with the inventor alive into his nineties, that is strong evidence, and it agrees with Wikipedia and newspaper profiles. Financial figures come from statutory accounts as reported by the business press, and they cover all of Tunnock's products, not Teacakes alone. The weakest material is the RAF story, which rests on recollection and has never been traced to an official record. Alan Davidson's The Oxford Companion to Food (3rd edn, ed. Tom Jaine, 2014) has no entry on Tunnock's; it is used only for background on marshmallow, teacakes and the British biscuit trade.

A bakery in Uddingston

established Thomas Tunnock was born in Uddingston in 1865, the son of a joiner and coffin maker. After serving his apprenticeship at a local bakery, he saved enough to buy a bakery business in the town for £80, and the firm dates itself to December 1890. A fire destroyed the bakery in 1910. Within two years a new one had opened at Loanhead Mansions, with a tearoom from 1912.

established Thomas died in January 1920, aged 54. His son Archie had served in Iraq during the First World War and on his return reopened the bakery in 1921 with his demobilisation money. Archie married Margaret Boyd in 1926; their sons were Tom, born in 1929, and Boyd, born in 1933. The firm's factory now stands on the site of the old bakery where Thomas had trained.

The 1950s: products that kept

established Post-war shortages shaped the firm's range. In 1952 Archie, wanting a product that would last longer than fresh cake, bought a dozen dry wafers and taught himself to make caramel and chocolate. The result was the Caramel Wafer. The Snowball followed in 1954, using an Italian meringue coated in chocolate-flavoured coating and coconut, and the Caramel Log in 1955. These were the products that turned a local baker into a confectionery manufacturer.

established The timing fits a wider pattern. Laura Mason, in her entry on biscuits in The Oxford Companion to Food, observes that the range of commercial biscuits in Britain had grown steadily since the mid-19th century, but that chocolate-coated biscuits "only became a lucrative business after the Second World War". Tunnock's chocolate-coated wafer, log and teacake were early entrants in that post-war market.

shared The food historian Lizzie Collingham, in The Biscuit (2020), gives a slightly different chronology. Chocolate biscuits, in her account, first appeared between the wars: Jacob's Club in 1919, McVitie's chocolate digestive in 1925, Macdonald's Penguin, made in Glasgow, in 1932 and Rowntree's Kit Kat in 1935. What changed after 1945 was the size of the market. She records that sweet biscuits stayed on points rationing until May 1950 and that flour, sugar, fat and eggs were not freely available until 1954, after which spending on biscuits and confectionery rose sharply. Tunnock's new lines of 1952–56 were launched just as those controls ended, which fits the company's own account of products made to keep.

Boyd Tunnock's Teacake

established In 1956 Boyd Tunnock, then 22 or 23, was given the job of creating a new product. According to the company, he carried out market research, built on the Italian meringue already used in the Snowball, hand-piped the mallow onto a biscuit base and coated it in milk chocolate. The Teacake went on sale that year.

shared Carol Foreman's account in Made in Scotland (2nd edn, 2010), also based on company material, tells it differently. She says Archie Tunnock created all the new products, with their success "a joint effort between father and sons", and quotes Boyd as saying that the first Teacake was piped by his father with a Savoy icing bag and dipped in melted chocolate. She also dates the Caramel Wafer to 1951 rather than 1952. The two versions come from the same family at different times and are not necessarily in conflict: Boyd may have led the development while Archie made the first trial. This card follows the company's current timeline but does not treat the credit as settled.

established Boyd later ran the company for decades and was appointed MBE in 1987, CBE in 2004 and knighted in the 2019 Birthday Honours for services to business and charity.

What is in a Teacake

established Tunnock's current ingredient declaration gives unusually precise proportions. A 24g milk chocolate Teacake is 38 per cent mallow, made from sugar, glucose syrup and egg white; 34 per cent milk chocolate; and 28 per cent biscuit, made from fortified wheat flour, palm and rapeseed oil, sugar and raising agents. A dark chocolate version uses the same mallow and biscuit. The mallow is an Italian meringue: egg white whipped with hot sugar syrup, which gives a stable, glossy foam rather than a set marshmallow.

shared The base is often called shortbread, including on Wikipedia. The ingredient list shows vegetable oil rather than butter, so "biscuit base", the company's own phrase, is more accurate. It is also not a teacake in the English sense of a toasted fruit bun.

established The Oxford Companion to Food makes the difference plain. Its entry on tea breads and tea cakes uses "tea cake" especially for flat buns about 15 cm across, often fruited and lightly enriched with butter and egg, which are split, toasted and buttered. Examples include the Yorkshire fat rascal. Tunnock's borrowed a general word for something eaten at tea; the product has nothing in common with the bun.

Mallow and marshmallow

established The Companion's entry on marshmallow explains why the company prefers "mallow". The confection takes its name from the marsh mallow plant, Althaea officinalis, whose root yielded a gummy substance that was the original base of the sweet. That has long been replaced. A modern marshmallow is made from syrup cooked to the hard-ball stage, combined with gelatine or gum arabic, and whisked into beaten egg whites, then left to set and cut into cubes. Tunnock's mallow uses no gelatine. It is egg white beaten with hot sugar and glucose syrup, an Italian meringue, which stays soft and glossy under the chocolate instead of setting firm.

From hand-piping to robots

established Foreman describes the early production line. Twenty-three women stood along a moving conveyor piping mallow on to the biscuits, which then went through a chocolate-enrobing machine, were cooled and were wrapped in foil by hand. They made 2,500 boxes of three dozen Teacakes a week. Archie Tunnock at first sent out wafers and mallows in plain cardboard boxes, then found that for a penny more he could have coloured boxes with lids that folded into display stands, which he said almost doubled his sales. Abroad the Caramel Wafer was sold as the "Piper" wafer, and Foreman names Newfoundland as the first export market.

established Hand-piping could not keep up with demand. The factory was extended in 1962 and 1965, and by 1970 a fleet of 37 vans was delivering across Scotland's Central Belt. The company bought its first Teacake robot in 2006, and a three-storey extension in 2018 added about 20,000 sq ft and roughly 10 per cent more capacity. The company does not publish its line engineering in detail, and this card does not guess at it.

Similar treats

shared Chocolate-coated mallow treats exist in many countries, such as the Danish flødebolle and the German Schokokuss. Tunnock's did not invent the idea. Its version is distinctive for its thin biscuit base, its proportions and its foil wrapper.

Commonwealth Games 2014

established At the opening ceremony of the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games at Celtic Park, about 30 performers in giant Teacake costumes danced across the arena. Tunnock's operations director, Fergus Loudon, told The Scotsman the firm was "absolutely bowled over". Waitrose reported that Teacake sales rose 62 per cent in the 24 hours after the ceremony. That is one retailer's figure, not a measure of total sales.

The "Great British Teacake" row

established In 2016 a Tunnock's advertising campaign on the London Underground billed the product as "Tunnock's Great British Teacake", and critics noticed that the Lion Rampant, long part of the brand, was missing from the adverts. Some Scottish nationalists called for a boycott. Boyd Tunnock, who had described himself as a unionist in a 2012 Herald interview, explained that "down south, people wouldn't know it as Scottish". The company said there had been no removal of the Lion Rampant from any packaging. About 18 months later it introduced packs for Japan carrying a Union flag and a "Made in Great Britain" message, to help sales in Asia.

The RAF legend

shared The story goes that Teacakes were popular with V-bomber crews and that in 1965 one left unwrapped on an instrument panel burst over the cockpit during a depressurisation, after which the snack was banned from flights. Wikipedia names RAF Gaydon as the base. A senior RAF source told reporters in 2025 that there was "no information on any explosion of confectionery".

established In April 2025 staff at the RAF Centre of Aerospace Medicine put Teacakes in an altitude chamber, taking them from 8,000 feet to 25,000 feet in a rapid decompression. The chocolate cracked and the mallow swelled, but nothing exploded. A medical officer instructor, Dr Oliver Bird, advised keeping them frozen and in their foil until needed.

The business today

established In the year to 23 February 2019 Tunnock's sales passed £60 million for the first time, at £61.4 million. In the year to 22 February 2025 turnover was £87.7 million, but pre-tax profit fell from £4.1 million to about £841,000. The directors blamed "unprecedented increases" in raw material costs, including the global cocoa crisis. The company employed an average of 653 people and invested £2.2 million in plant. These figures cover all Tunnock's products. Foreman, writing in 2010, gives weekly output of four million Caramel Wafers, three million Teacakes and a million each of Snowballs and Caramel Logs, with about 600 staff; those are dated company figures. A fifth generation of the family, Boyd's grandson Stuart, joined the business in 2013.

• Thomas Tunnock paid £80 for his bakery in 1890.
• Boyd Tunnock was in his early twenties when he developed the Teacake.
• More than a third of a Teacake by weight is chocolate.
• The Snowball came two years before the Teacake and used the same kind of meringue.
• Waitrose sold 62 per cent more Teacakes the day after the 2014 opening ceremony.
• An RAF altitude chamber has confirmed that Teacakes do not explode.
• Marshmallow is named after a plant whose root once gave the sweet its texture; Tunnock's mallow uses egg white and sugar instead.
• In England a "teacake" usually means a toasted fruit bun.
• In the 1950s twenty-three women piped Teacake mallow by hand along a conveyor.
• Abroad, the Caramel Wafer was once sold as the "Piper" wafer.

• Myth: Tunnock's invented the chocolate-coated mallow cake. Similar treats exist in many countries, such as the Danish flødebolle and the German Schokokuss. Tunnock's version is distinctive for its thin biscuit base, its proportions and its foil wrapper.
• Disputed: A Teacake exploded in an RAF cockpit in 1965. The story rests on recollection and has never been traced to an official record. A senior RAF source said in 2025 there was "no information on any explosion of confectionery", and an RAF altitude-chamber test that year found Teacakes crack and swell but do not explode.
• Myth: The base is butter shortbread. The ingredient list shows vegetable oil, not butter. The company calls it a biscuit base.
• Myth: Tunnock's removed the Lion Rampant from its packaging in 2016. The row concerned an advertising campaign that billed the product as "Great British Teacake". The company said there had been no removal of the Lion Rampant from any packaging.
• Disputed: who created the Teacake. The company credits Boyd Tunnock. An earlier account by Carol Foreman says his father Archie created the firm's new products and piped the first Teacake. It was a family effort, and the credit is not settled.