A Recipe: Yorkshire Parkin -

with bonus recipe for a steam-oven Crème Anglaise (a cowardy custard)

“Remember, remember, the 5th of November …”

Scroll down for the recipe, or read on for the history and drama …

Enacting Tradition

In 1605, you may already be aware, Guy Fawkes and his fellow Gunpowder Plotters failed to blow up the Houses of Parliament. You may also be aware of the annual celebration of that failure, and you may well have grown up with its traditions. What may have passed you by is that King James (VI of Scotland, I of England) was responsible for creating this tradition by passing into law an ‘Act for a Public Thanksgiving …’ to enforce an annual celebration – in the form of a tedium of church services, which the public immediately made a whole lot more fun by adding in bonfires and fireworks.

Tradition meets Modernity

The Act was law for a good couple of centuries, only lapsing in 1859, and while the church services are not missed, the fireworks and bonfires endure to this day – along with an ever dwindling number of associated minor ‘extortions’ (“a ‘penny’ for the Guy”), burning effigies, and daft competitions (apple-bobbing anyone?).

Arguably, in modern times, it’s in better taste to prioritise the more Hallmark-centric, adjacently positioned, and internationally run Halloween celebrations – by getting your mum to dress you up ‘in the spirit’, or a stylist to help you cosplay a divorce drama – than it is to parade with a mob intent on burning effigies of poor old Guy, especially considering time lapsed and the appallingly barbaric punishments he and his fellow conspirators endured for daring deeds that never did actually get done.

A Ginger Parkin befitting a Bonfire

But, all that said, tradition has its magnetic attractions, even when not enacted into law, and one of those that has very much endured – for reasons of good taste and co-incidental timings of grain harvests – is that of a Yorkshire Parkin partaken alongside a November bonfire.

Those not hailing from the North may require further explanation: a Parkin is, in essence, a form of gingerbread cake made with Northern heart from a Northern ‘grain’: ie oatmeal – a ‘weed’ that didn’t mind the cold and damp, grew more easily than wheat in Yorkshire’s terrain, and became a cultivated Northern staple.

It’s the oatmeal that gifts the cake a chewy, sticky texture, it’s also the oatmeal that requires you give the cake (at least!) a couple of days to mature while it absorbs additional moisture and flavour.

Modern recipes tend to cut it with wheat flour to tenderise its crumb – some have even ditched the oats entirely (Hairy Bikers, we’re looking at you), and the following recipe is a composition put together by a Southerner using notes taken from ‘original sources’, who may or may not have the necessary pedigree (Gary Rhodes, Jane Grigson’s ‘Aunty Belle’ (possibly apocryphal), and Julie Duff).

Our result has leaned heavily on Gary’s advice (because his recipes tend to work), has gifted a heady perfume to our showroom this weekend, and we are having to sit on our hands to wait for the ‘big day’ while we allow our cake to mature to a sufficiency of sticky perfection for tasting.

In the meantime, the recipe we created is described below. We’ve added in some suggestions for ‘improvements’ from our advisers – but understand that purists may insist that ginger is the only essential spice, and that orange zest may be an overly bold addition. Otherwise, feel free to tinker with proportions of treacle to golden syrup, or the darkness of your sugar – according to whether your personal taste runs rich and dark, or softly golden.

Ingredients

‘Wet’ Ingredients:

100g unsalted butter
100g dark muscovado sugar
50g black treacle
100g golden syrup
Zest of one orange (optional)

35ml milk
1 x large egg

Dry Ingredients:

100g plain flour
75g medium size/quick cook oats
1tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
2tsps ground powdered ginger
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon (optional)
¼ tsp ground cloves (optional)

Equipment

1 x square cake tin (22cm)

Method

Grease and base line the cake tin. Pre-heat the oven to 150ºC
Weigh the butter, muscovado sugar, treacle, and golden syrup directly into a medium saucepan and place over a low heat (with orange zest if using), stirring occasionally, until the ingredients are fully melted and merged with each other (do not boil!). Allow to cool slightly.

In the meantime …

In a medium sized mixing bowl, sieve together the flour, powdered spices and raising agents (baking powder and bicarbonate of soda), and stir in the oats. Make a well in the centre of these dry ingredients.

Then …

Whisk the egg with the milk and add (while stirring), into the melted together ‘wet’ ingredients.
Add all the wet ingredients to the dry – mixing as you do so – to create a homogenous batter. Pour into your prepared cake tin, place in the oven and reduce the temperature to 140ºC.
Bake until firm to the touch – this will take anywhere between 40 and 60 minutes.
Cool the cake, in the tin, on a wire rack, You can turn it out after about half an hour if you want to eat immediately, or wrap in greaseproof paper and foil and allow to mature for 2-3 days (minimum) if you want it improve further in flavour (as tradition more normally dictates).

Cut into squares, enjoy by a bonfire if you happen to be in the vicinity of one. Otherwise, this sweetly dense, long-lasting gingerbread goes well with a cuppa, a hod toddy, or – counter-intuitively perhaps – as an accompaniment to cheese.
There are also those who add more eggs, eat it warm, and treat it as a pudding (recipe below) – served with custard*(crème Anglaise, if you’re going to be fancy – steam oven recipe included below) and decadent butterscotch sauce – we may also try this.

*Crème Anglaise (steam oven method)

A Crème Anglaise (custard) sauce, normally requires degrees of skill and precision, not to mention time spent at the stove carefully stirring – hoping for the best – and waiting for the exact moment when the sauce will (eventually!) ‘coat the back of your spoon’ when it will demonstrate to you that it is cooked to perfection. At this point you need to be sure of yourself (and your custard) and to act fast to remove it from the heat IMMEDIATELY! – and it will still often be necessary (even for professionals) to sieve the result so as to remove the few bits of egg that have gone over the top (temperature-wise) and become cooked to a ‘scramble’.

With a steam oven, you can essentially just put the combined ingredients in a jar, put on a lid, walk away, and leave the oven to demonstrate its skill on your behalf. Job done!

For steam-oven perfected custard, follow the instructions below – if you need more custard, just scale up the recipe.

(A crème Anglaise can, btw, also be frozen – it is the classic base for making ice-cream).