Spent most of today cooking for the Breast Cancer Awareness Bake Sale tomorrow at work and here are the delicious results...
---2. A pan of Parkin:
But I so don't want to have to cook supper now!
...consisting of --- 1. A pan of flapjack with golden raisins:
Before you ask---here's the recipe from http://www.mydish.co.uk/recipe/1478/raisin-flapjacks
· 8oz Porridge oats [dry oatmeal]
· 4oz butter or margarine
· 2oz Demerara Sugar [can use soft brown sugar]
· 1tbs Golden Syrup [Karo syrup either dark or light]
· 3oz Golden Raisins
1 - Melt the butter, sugar and syrup together over a very low heat, stirring carefully with a wooden spoon.
2 - Take the pan off the heat and add the raisins and oats to the mixture, stir well ensuring everything is coated.
3 - Pour the mixture into the baking tin and press it down. Bake for 20 minutes.
4 - Cut the flapjacks into squares while still warm. When they have cooled, take them out of the tin and store in a biscuit tin (if they last that long!!).
These and the next are traditional to make for Bonfire night [November 5th]
Parkin is essentially the Northern English form of gingerbread. Different parkins are characterized by where they are made and Yorkshire Parkin, one the most famous, is made using oats. Yorkshire Parkin is eaten on Bonfire Night, November 5th, celebrating the famous failure of Guy Fawkes to blow up the Houses on Parliament in 1605. Guy Fawkes was a Yorkshireman.
This Parkin Recipe is easy to make and creates a lovely, moist sticky cake - though you can eat the cake almost immediately it gets stickier if you wrap and store it for several days. The other beauty of the cake is it keeps really well in an airtight tin, can be eaten as a cake or warm as a pudding with a dollop of custard and make an interesting alternative to sponge cake in a trifle, giving it a more autumny flavour than a light summer trifle.
Recipe adapted from: http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifea ndstyle/2009/oct/31/campfire-cooking-bonfire-night-halloween-recipes
· 340g medium oatmeal
· 185g plain flour
· 2 tbsp soft brown sugar
· 3 tsp ground ginger
· ½ tsp freshly ground nutmeg
· ½ tsp salt
· 65g stem ginger, roughly chopped [I used fresh]
· 250g golden syrup
· 250g black treacle or molasses
· 125g unsalted butter
· 70ml milk
· ½ tsp bicarbonate of soda
Butter a 22cm baking tin and dust with flour. Line with baking parchment and grease that, too. Heat the oven to 170C/ 325F/gas mark 3. Whisk the first six ingredients in a bowl, and stir in the stem ginger. Warm the syrup, treacle and butter until the butter has just melted. In another pan, warm the milk to blood temperature, add bicarb, and mix into the dry ingredients with the treacle. Pour into the tin and bake for 40 minutes, until just firm to the touch (scatter on the almonds after 15 minutes). Leave to cool a little, then cut into squares.
---3. Strawberry Vanilla cupcakes
After cooking all that to sell, thought I better make something to keep, so I also made us
4.cheese and onion bread:
5. pan of cherry crumble, which I am going to serve up momentarily
The efforts of my day, it feels good to be so productive:
Thanks for visiting!
Gabrielle
2011
