Celebrating Heritage British Food & Cooking
Parkin is a traditional ginger cake from Northern England flavoured with syrupy molasses, oatmeal and warm spices.
Baked mainly in Yorkshire and also Lancashire, parkin nowadays is eaten on November 5th, Guy Fawkes Night.
Being oat-based, cakes like parkin would have historically been made straight after the oat harvest in the first week of November.
When you bake parkin it comes out quite hard but with about 5 days of ageing, it becomes soft and sticky.
Parkin
Parkin is a traditional ginger cake from Northern England flavoured with syrupy molasses, oatmeal and warm spices.
Ingredients
- 250 g self-raising flour
- 200 g butter
- 200 g golden syrup
- 100 g medium oatmeal or porridge oats
- 85 g treacle
- 85 g light soft brown sugar
- 1 large egg
- 4 tbsp milk
- 1 tbsp ground ginger
- ½ tbsp ground nutmeg
- ½ tbsp ground cinnamon
- Extra butter for the cake tin
Conversions
Instructions
- Preheat your oven to 160°C/140°C/gas mark 3.
- Line a deep square cake tin with baking paper. Rub butter around the cake tin to grease it up.
- Beat the egg and gradually add the milk.
- Separately, melt the golden syrup, sugar, butter and treacle in a large pan. Keep mixing until the sugar has dissolved, then remove from the heat.
- Put the oatmeal, ginger, nutmeg, cinnamon and flour into the syrup mixture. Stir together until it’s completely incorporated.
- Add the egg and milk mixture.
- Pour the mixture into the cake tin.
- Bake for 50 minutes to an hour, until the cake is firm and a little crusty on top.
- Let it cool in the tin and wrap in more baking paper and foil.
Notes
If you can, wait for up to five days before eating the parkin. The longer you wait, the softer and stickier it will become. You can leave it for up to two weeks…if you have the willpower!
You may also like one of my other favourite recipes …
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