Post 127: Hugh Fearnley Whittinstall's Parkin

I like Hugh, but often I find his recipes not especially easy and also pretty time intensive. Probably quite alright if your job is basically to spend the day cooking something nice and then write about it. I'm not jealous at all, no, no, no.

Anyway saturday's Guardian had his parkin recipe in it and it looked commendably simple. So I had a go. The full recipe is here http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/oct/31/campfire-cooking-bonfire-night-halloween-recipes, I adpated it slightly, omitting the stem ginger (because I didn't have any). So here's what I used:

• 340g medium oatmeal
• 185g plain flour
• 2 tbsp soft brown sugar
• 3 tsp ground ginger
• ½ tsp each: bicarb, freshly ground nutmeg, salt
• 250g golden syrup, 250g black treacle
• 
  125g unsalted butter
  
• 70ml milk
  The method was pretty simple - mix the dry ingredients. Melt together the butter, treacle and syrup. Add in the milk - warmed to blood temperatue (which I did, but didn't really understand). Mix, then bake for ~40 minutes at 170.
  

Here's the result. A firm, slightly dry very gingery cake. The edges formed a crust outside a softer, moister inside. This sounds like a bad thing; but the end slice was my favourite. It sticks to your ribs! Which I suppose it exactly the effect desired for a cake to be eaten around a bonfire.