Back to Baking with Traditional Parkin

Hello, well it has been a long time hasn't it!

So much has happened over the last year that Charlie and I have had a little break from baking, but having been watching the latest series of Great British Bake Off, we are back in the swing again and ready, steady to bake!

So, what was so important that stopped us baking?  We moved back to the UK, lock, stock and two moaning girls!  We have moved back to our home town of Knutsford in Cheshire and after 7 years in Holland it has been quite a shock to the old system.  Home still looks like home, but it is very different or is that we are very different?  Anyway its a full adjustment for all of us but nobody more so than Charlie - she was thrown into the first year of high school and its nothing like she has ever experienced previously - and that's just the school uniform!  Me? well I've gone back to work after a 7 year break which is proving to be a challenge for not only me,  but the girls are having to adjust to not having me around so much.  I hope baking will give me a chance to spend some much needed time with Charlie.

So Baking.

Can I just say before I start - how wonderful it is to have a supermarket full of baking paraphernalia - its like an Aladdin's cave, truly wonderful..

Old Fashioned Traditional Parkin.

Just in time for Halloween, a blast from my past - Parkin.  Charlie has graced me with her presence - did I mention my lovely little girl has turned into a hormonal teenager?  Anyway she harrumphs her way into the kitchen and then harrumphs her way to the sink as I insist she washes her hands - yikes we are starting from scratch.   I gather myself and sit at the kitchen table and let Charlie weigh and measure all the ingredients including Dark Rich Black Treacle - just the smell of it reminds me of Halloween and bonfire night.

So she measures out the butter and sugar into a pan and adds the Black Treacle.  This is then melted and added to the dry ingredients.  Time to wiz in the machine.  This then gets baked in deep square tin for about 1 hour.

Charlie then pops off to watch TV! excuse me madam, do I look like a washing up fairy - harrumph, she comes back and half heartedly cleans up after herself.


After and hour the Parkin is out of the oven and is cooled on a rack for 10 mins before turning out.  Once the Parkin is cold, you have to wrap it up in baking paper and pop it into an air tight tin for 7 days - this lets the flavours develop - you can also see the colour darkens too.   If you can wait, do it really is worth it - The taste? just as I remember mmmmmmmm delish!

 

I have to be honest, this was one of our most stressful bakes, we are both out of practice - Charlie assumed she knew everything and I was a bear with a sore head, so this wasn't the most enjoyable of baking sessions.  I need to remember she's not my eager 10 year old anymore, she's 12 and a half and changing - maybe a pinch of patience is required to all my baking going forward?