Yorkshire Parkin
by Regula Ysewijn From Oats in the North, Wheat from the South (Murdoch Books)
Photography Regula Ysewijn
Parkin is a type of gingerbread that is mainly associated with the counties of Yorkshire & Lancashire. While a lot of gingerbread is rather biscuit-like, parkin is a cake. Traditionally this ginger cake is made for the festivities around Guy Fawkes Night. In the past it coincided with the harvest of oats in the first week of November, and oats are an essential part of this cake and the principal crop of the area.
Modern recipes for parkin often don’t contain oats, only wheat flour, resulting in cakes with a finer texture that are more like gingerbread. The recipe I give you here is made with oats, and is an acquired taste to the modern palate. The cake is best made in advance and left to rest for a few days to a couple of weeks.
For 9 squares
For a 20cm (8 inch) square cake tin
Ingredients
100g (3½ oz) rolled oats
200g (7 oz) golden syrup or maple syrup
45g (1½ oz) black treacle or molasses
200g (7 oz) butter
200g (7 oz) oat flour
2 tsp bicarbonate of soda (baking soda)
2 tsp ground ginger
½ tsp ground nutmeg
1 egg
2 tbsp whisky, or milk
sea salt a pinch
Method
Preheat your oven to 160°C/140°C fan/gas mark 3 and grease the tin.
Briefly pulse the oats in a food processor fitted with the blade attachment.
Heat the golden syrup, black treacle and butter in a saucepan until melted and combined. Set aside to cool for a few minutes, then add the chopped oats and the remaining ingredients. Combine well with a wooden spoon or spatula. Spread the mixture into the cake tin.
Bake for 50-60 minutes, then cool in the tin. When the cake is cold, cut it into squares and pack it in an airtight container to rest for at least a day before serving.
The cake gets stickier and more moist every day and can last for 2 weeks if you can hide it for that long.
Drinks tasted on air, alongside the dish:
this is a fascinating look at a traditional british cake. the historical connection to guy fawkes night and the november oat harvest adds a lot of context. i appreciate the note about modern recipes often omitting oats, which changes the texture. the advice to let the parkin rest for several days to develop its stickiness is a key detail that many recipes might overlook. it's interesting to see how regional ingredients like oats define the character of the dish. Image To SVG
@FNF Would replacing the oat flour with wheat flour change the traditional parkin’s dense, chewy texture significantly, or is the resting period the main factor in developing its characteristic stickiness?