Mary’s Yorkshire sponge parkin

My mum Mary’s recipe, dating from way-back-when, and still as good as ever. It freezes well, but it’s best to slice it before freezing.

Ingredients

• 250g self raising flour
• 150g oatmeal
• 2 rounded tsp ground ginger
• 200g sugar
• 50g butter
• 250g treacle (see notes)
• 1 egg, beaten with 280ml milk
• pinch salt

Method

1. Heat oven to 180C / 160C fan. Grease and line a shallow baking tin, about 250mm square by about 30mm deep.
2. Mix oatmeal, flour, ginger and sugar together thoroughly. Warm butter and treacle in a pan, and beat together. Add the dry ingredients and the beaten egg alternately, a little at a time.
3. Pour mixture into tin and bake for about 1.5 hours. When cool, wrap in foil. Best left to mature for 24 hours before eating.

Notes

In Yorkshire, the stuff that they call “treacle” is known to almost everyone else as golden syrup. It’s definitely NOT black treacle!