Nosey Parkin

“Vox et praeterea nihil” – A voice and nothing besides”. Latin

A dear friend came over today and during the afternoon I suggested we did some baking.   A Yorkshire lass, she suggested her mother’s recipe for Parkin; a soft treacle cake with oats.  She asked for a cup and a mug to measure dry ingredients and proceeded to make the Parkin from memory and calling out the ingredients as we went along.  Genius!  We mixed the whole lot up and put into a baking tray of six buttered mini-loaves.  At which point I over enthusiastically bunged it into the oven, the tray fell and somehow ended upside down in the bottom!   The smell was fantastic as the hot oven singed a thin layer of the fallen mixture.  We shovelled it back into the tray with spatulas and after the clean up all went well.  Against the all the rules of cake making, I kept opening the oven to take a peek.  The result was delicious; the oats and black syrup gave the Parkin a robustness and depth which contrasts with the surprising lightness of the cake. The mini-loaves looked cute too.  I’m going to save some for a few days to see how it ages.  We ate some for desert with blueberries, which I’m sure they don’t do in Filey. 

I scribbled the recipe down as; 1 x mug of SR Flour (we used both wholemeal and white); 1 x cup of sugar (brown); 1 x cup of oats; t-spoon of ginger; t-spoon of bicarbonate of soda; 2 x tablespoons of golden syrup; 1 x tablespoon of black syrup; 1 cup of hot water (or warm milk); one beaten egg; 5oz soft butter.