I wish to reclaim our four-hundred year old tradition of Bonfire Night! I’m sure the idea of an autumn fire festival is much older than the Gunpowder Plot and Guido Fawkes attempts to blow up Parliament, but lets just call it Bonfire Night and celebrate November 5th.
And of course, being me, any celebration has to have food to go with it. We always have tomato soup (Heinz) and sausages (Powters of course) and I also make Parkin, a lovely sticky gingerbread.
There are hundreds of recipes and I seem to use a different one every year, but the essential ingredients are black treacle (molasses) and golden syrup melted together and then poured into a rubbed in mixture of dark sugar, butter, flour, oatmeal, spices – chiefly ginger, although I added some mace. I also this year added some Chinese stem ginger cut into small pieces. I accidentally ever so slightly overcooked my Parkin this year, so it needed some butter spread on it (good excuse, eh?!) It is also delicious with cheese – another excellent Yorkshire custom!
Lois Elsden 
Mouth watering now! x
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Go and make some!!
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Well, well…! 🙂
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Very well well, Dina!
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This takes me back to my childhood when we had potato pie, treacle toffee and parkin around the fire.
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Mmmm – did you have red cabbage with your pie?
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Haven’t had parkin since I was a kid!
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Make some tomorrow!
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